Eastbourne's official Met Office standard weather station equipment is used for compiling our formal weather records.
The station is used to monitor local weather on a daily basis and send reports to the Met Office. Our daily records are also published in Monthly Reports on this site.
Weather Station Instruments
Our Met Office approved station is part of the UK Climatological Observing Network and is situated Latitude 50º,46’N : Longitude 0º,17’E.
The station's instruments and records are regularly inspected by the Met Office to ensure they meet their standards.
Technical information about standards for weather station equipment and records is on the Met Office website.
Our weather station consists of a set of instruments at two locations:
Roof of the Council Offices at 1 Grove Road
This site has a Campbell-Stokes Sunshine Recorder and an Indicator Cup Anemometer.
From this vantage point, observations of cloud amount, visibility, wind direction and speed, plus distant weather conditions are made and recorded at 09.00 hours daily.
Until November 2006 this was situated on the roof of the Grand Hotel, King Edwards Parade on Eastbourne seafront.
Enclosure opposite the Congress Theatre in Carlisle Road
Here Maximum and Minimum, Wet and Dry Thermometers are enclosed in a Stevenson Screen.
30cm and 100cm Soil Thermometers are also positioned here, together with a Grass Minimum Thermometer and Rain Gauge.
Sea Water Temperature Recording
Until 2006 we used a special Sea Thermometer to take readings from the head of Eastbourne Pier, continuously recording daily sea temperatures since 1892.
Now these records are taken from the Channel Coastal Observatory coastal monitoring programme readings at Pevensey Bay. You can also view real time data from the Channel Coastal Observatory using the link from this page.
Other Weather Instruments
A Kew pattern barometer is situated in the council's offices at 1 Grove Road.
In this section you can find out about the history of our weather station. Official weather records have been kept continuously in Eastbourne since 1867:
