I was reading a post yesterday about the definition of a gale and the
'exaggeration' of some inland sites when reporting them.

I'm sure most amateur weather stations in domestic locations, even good
ones, suffer from having their anemometer below the standard WMO height of
10m. My Davis station was supplied with a tripod which reaches 2.5m. I was
able to get the anemometer to 4.5m by adding more poles but anything more
would both annoy my neighbours and probably require planning permission!

The Met Office's Observers Handbook contains a formula that provides an
approximate conversion from actual height to standard height. At 4.5m, this
is co-incidentally almost the exact reciprocal of the conversion from mph to
knots. Therefore my weather station set to mph provides an approximation to
the standard height in knots; quite handy.

The winter weather has still not reached Henfield (Sussex) by 12.45
(22/03/08). There was a recent heavy rain/hail shower but no sign of snow.
There's currently 7/8 Sc but there must be some Cb lurking somewhere....

Dave Parker