Met Office SYNOP observations

The Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, runs a network of automatic weather stations that report every hour in the international SYNOP format. These reports are shared worldwide through the World Meteorological Organization’s WIS2 system as core data, free and unrestricted. The catalog keeps the stations within 50 km of the coast and below 500 m: headlands, islands, harbours and coastal airfields from Cornwall to Shetland and Northern Ireland. Each report gives the 10-minute mean wind speed and direction and the strongest gust over the last 10 minutes, with air temperature, pressure and humidity where the station measures them. Readings arrive a few minutes after each hour; a report sometimes arrives late or without wind, and a station can stay silent during maintenance. These are raw real-time observations, not forecasts.