Met Office VS Weatherspark historic averages - who to trust?

[Dublin_Bay_Prawn]

For a while now I have been harvesting data from my weather station and am now analysing it for trends etc.

I wish to compare what I calculate with typical "averages" for my area.

I live in Guiseley near Leeds and found data on the Met Office website for a weather station in Bingley. I also had looked at other "sources", one being Weatherspark for Leeds/Bradford Airport.

Whereas the temperature data agrees between the two, the rainfall does not.

Met office Bingley, 1991-2020, average annual rainfall is 1057mm pa.

Weatherspark LBA, 1980-1016, average annual rainfall is  581 mm pa.

In fact other Met Office stations also report rainfall averages twice or more that the "Weatherspark" and similar websites.

 

Too large a difference, what am I missing?

[Jamie M]

1 hour ago, Dublin_Bay_Prawn said:

For a while now I have been harvesting data from my weather station and am now analysing it for trends etc.

I wish to compare what I calculate with typical "averages" for my area.

I live in Guiseley near Leeds and found data on the Met Office website for a weather station in Bingley. I also had looked at other "sources", one being Weatherspark for Leeds/Bradford Airport.

Whereas the temperature data agrees between the two, the rainfall does not.

Met office Bingley, 1991-2020, average annual rainfall is 1057mm pa.

Weatherspark LBA, 1980-1016, average annual rainfall is  581 mm pa.

In fact other Met Office stations also report rainfall averages twice or more that the "Weatherspark" and similar websites.

 

Too large a difference, what am I missing?

I'd use the Met Office averages - WeatherSpark could very easily have data missing or data that isn't QC'd properly which could explain the differences. The averaging periods as well of 1980 - 2016 would have a slight difference to 1991-2020

[Dublin_Bay_Prawn]

21 minutes ago, Jamie M said:

I'd use the Met Office averages - WeatherSpark could very easily have data missing or data that isn't QC'd properly which could explain the differences. The averaging periods as well of 1980 - 2016 would have a slight difference to 1991-2020

Yes, I agree that both sources of errors do propably exist but I would have thought that the discrepancy would be far less than 50% / 100% that I find.

Like you, my feeling is, until I understand their data sources better, to go with the Met Office data.....we do get a lot of rain here!

Thanks