The climate and weather of the Otter Valley in Devon, England. The Otter Valley Weather Station is situated alongside the River Otter between the villages of Newton Poppleford & Otterton in the low-lying hinterland of south-east Devon, 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) west of the coastal regency town of Sidmouth.
The Otter Valley Weather Station was setup in Spring 2005 and consists of a set of Met Office approved sheathed minimum and maximum thermometers, plus a wet & dry bulb hygrometer (using a humidity calculator) housed in a Stevenson Screen. A standard Casella 5 inch rain gauge is also used. As an addition, electronic measurements are also taken using a Davis Vantage Pro2+ automatic weather station which feeds directly back to a PC enabling the production of continuous 5 minute data sets. Parameters which are measured electronically are wind speed (anemometer at 10 metres) and direction, grass minimum, soil temperature at 30 and 100 cm depth, rain intensity (via a tipping bucket rain gauge), UV Index, solar radiation and sunshine duration (Instromet R&D type Sun Sensor). There is a Boltek Stormtracker lightning detector giving live view of lightning strikes. There is also a webcam and gives a view of the southern sky looking towards the sea. The site is situated on a relatively wide valley floor of the River Otter, just north of the village of Otterton and is sheltered to the east and west, and slightly exposed to the north, and rather exposed to the south.
Nearby villages and towns are Ottery St Mary, Budleigh Salterton, Sidmouth, Seaton, Fluxton, Tipton St John, Colaton Raleigh, Otterton, Newton Poppleford.
The Otter Valley starts up in the Blackdown Hills and runs roughly SSW to the sea at Budleigh Salterton. This weather station is situated alongside the River Otter near the village of Otterton in the south-east of Devon, which is in the south west of England. The nearest coastline is 3.5 km away at Jacob's Ladder Beach, Sidmouth. The area is dominated by rolling, lush green hills and soft, broad-leaved wooded valleys and the dramatic, inspiring coastline of the Jurassic Coast, which is a natural World Heritage Site. The climate is maritime temperate hence, mild, humid and dominated by the Atlantic Ocean to the west.
The Otter Valley Weather Home Page