I thought I would pose this question here as there is a concentration of retired and (maybe?) current Met Office staff here with experience of observation networks.

In the current issue of Weather - in Weather Log - we find that 14 of the 21 UK sites listed give figures for days with snow lying and fog. Meanwhile, a further 4 just have a fog figure. 3 sites have no such data at all. My question is - does the existence of data imply that a station is staffed or part or maybe all of a day or is it simply a reflection of the appropriate sensor being installed? Are the observations comparable - for example, the snow depth sensor cannot find a representative patch of ground in the enclosure as the human can.

On a separate issue, no sunshine data is now available for Valley, Durham and Cambridge, each sites with long term records of sunshine on the old Campbell-Stokes instrument. (off hand I can't remember if it is Cambridge NIAB or the Botanic Gardens shown). It is even worse for the Europe list, including many capital cities which really must have sunshine data.

Many thanks, Julian
Molesey, Surrey.