WANSTEAD’S answer to Michael Fish is providing neighbours with hyperlocal forecasts via a weather station in his garden which cost £90.

Scott Whitehead, 40, has set up the computerised station to tweet hourly updates from his home in Wanstead Park Avenue, Aldersbrook.

And he has even created a website where neighbours can see what the weather will be like for their daily shop on the High Street or morning walk to the tube.

Mr Whitehead, who works as journalist for the Financial Times, said: “It’s hard for me to explain why I’m so fascinated with the weather, but I’ve always loved it.

“I suppose it’s a bit geeky – one of those things like trainspotting, but making the weather as local as possible appeals to me. We have our own microclimate down here.”

Mr Whitehead’s weather station provides details on temperatures, windchill, rainfall and even solar radiation, and he has data for Wanstead stretching back to 1996 when he moved into the area.

The hottest day he has records for is August 10, 2003 when the thermometer hit 38C in Wanstead.

And the coldest came last February, when he recorded a temperature of -9.1C .

“My wife finds it all a bit funny, but she understands and even took me to the old Met office in Bracknell as a birthday treat, which I was very happy about,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say my forecasts of local weather are better than the Met’s, but I can look at a forecast that says ‘you will have a low temperature of three degrees’, and I will know that it will be a good two degrees colder in Aldersbrook, for example.

“I don’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions that Aldersbrook and Wanstead are more prone to frost than Woodford Green or Epping.”

Mr Whitehead is not the first meteorologist to take a specific interest in Wanstead. 

Luke Howard, the man referred to as ‘the father of meteorology’, wrote about the weather in Wanstead as long ago as the 19th century.

In his seminal book ‘The Climate of London’ Howard describes a thunderstorm on Wanstead Flats in August 1827 which caused ‘great consternation’ among the inhabitants.

“One man named Scales, a blacksmith, was struck by the lightning and knocked down after some time,” he wrote. “However, he recovered the shock and sustained no injury other than that produced by extreme fright. Two large trees were literally shivered to atoms.”

To get your Wanstead weather log onto wansteadweather.co.uk or follow Mr Whitehead on Twitter via @wanstead_meteo