- “About September 1912, Oscar Denton replaced Thomas Osborne as the Greenland Ranch USWB COOP weather station observer. Denton, of San Diego, began signing the USWB COOP forms in September, but the first form with data in his handwriting was December 1912. Denton served as the observer, caretaker, and foreman of the ranch for the Pacific Coast Borax Company until mid-August, 1920. Thus, Denton’s first full summer as the weather observer was the summer of 1913.”
- “When rain fell at the ranch, recorded amounts were almost invariably in the amounts of 0.01”, 0.10”, 0.20”, and 0.30”.”
- “There were occasional periods when the daily maximum and minimum temperatures would take on a persistent and rather unnatural numerical pattern.”
- “These instances suggest that Denton may have been just ‘filling in the blanks’ for days when he missed taking the observations.”
The original article list many other issues.
All in all it seems Denton wasn’t the most professional observer. Obviously 100 years later anything is difficult to proof, but it seems very likely that not enough care was taken when recording the numbers.