update 3/06/09: The SSC Hut AWS is up and running with temperature, humidity and air pressure at this time.  Replacement connectors for the wind sensor and rain gauge are on order, but not in stock with the suppliers. A full service will be restored as soon as possible.

With fresh drifts lying on CairnGorm Mountain, there was a distinct nip in the air this evening while walking up to the Scottish Ski Club Hut at 2500ft by the foot of the White Lady.

Saturday’s trip was undertaken to move the SSC Hut webcams to their summer positions, this is partly to give a more interesting wider view from the mountain outwith the Snowsports Season, but also to reduce camera exposure to direct sunlight looking Southwards up the White Lady during Summer.

The Lady Camera looks out the opposite end of the hut during Summer giving a view over the Kassbohrer garage and lower slopes towards Aviemore. Around dawn and dusk the lights of Aviemore can be seen centre picture when visibility is good, while the partly hidden Loch Morlich is visible to the middle right of the image.

Newly upgraded Balcony Cam

The SSC Hut Balcony Cam has been upgraded to a higher resolution 2mp auto focus camera, from the older fixed focus camera that has served us well the past 2 winters. The higher resolution and auto focus will give crisper images, but due to very limited bandwidth it’s not possible to increase image sizes just now. (But this is being looked at for the future).

During Summer the balcony camera is turned round by approximately 90 degrees to give a partially uphill view, since the other camera is looking downhill.

Weather Station Upgrade & Repairs

During winter the wind sensor array at the SSC hut suffered from an intermittent fault, which only occurred in thaw conditions following on from a cold spell with powdery snow. The anemometer then functioned when either temps went back below freezing or it became warmer and drier, suggestive that water ingress into the AWS unit from drifting snow accumulating inside the thermometer’s radiation shield then subsequently melting was a contributing factor.

On inspection the internal connector plugs in the AWS are starting to corrode and the wind vane cable has been damaged during winter. The main sensor array unit has been taken off site to have the connector modules replaced and this will be carried out during the coming week. A new cup anemometer unit was installed on Saturday afternoon, ready for the return of the main AWS Unit and it is hoped to have the weather station along with the upgraded aneometer back online by mid May for Summer.

This afternoon myself and Keith from Loch Morlich Water Sports installed a new Automatic Weather Station at Loch Morlich at an altitude of 1050ft (or 320m for those who try to make the hills look smaller than they are).

Coupled with Winterhighland’s other the AWS at the SSC Hut at 2500ft up on the ‘Gorm along with CML’s AWS on the Funicular Tunnel Mouth at 3400ft and the Met Office and Herriot Watt Unis Summit AWS there is now  (and  possibly uniquely in the UK) a good  vertical spread in live weather reporting stations on CairnGorm Mountain from the Glen to the Summit.

Take together these should provide a great resouce for monitoring how conditions are changing and provide a useful tool for helping plan weather dependent activities year round.

It is also hoped that they will taken together with longer standing manual records allow for a better understanding of the climate on CairnGorm Mountain and how the weather varies spatially and altitudinally on the mountain, helping with planning for the future of snowsports on the ‘Gorm.

For any one interested in some of the technical details, the Weather Station at Loch Morlich is a Technoline WS2300 with data handling and upload undertaken by a PII running Xubuntu linux with the Open2300 open source command line applications.

The AWS at the SSC Hut on CairnGorm Mountain is a WS3600 with propeller anemometer using the Open3600 software suite.

SSC & L. Morlich AWS www.winterhighland.info/cairngorm .

The Funicular Tunnel AWS  www.cairngormmountain.co.uk .

Herriot Watt Summit AWS www.phy.hw.ac.uk/resrev/weather.htm .

Please visit Loch Morlich Water Sports , once again many thanks for your help in making it possible to get live weather data from Glenmore.

There’s been a recurring issue over the past few days witn the wind data dropping out from the Ski Club Hut automatic weather station on CairnGorm Mountain.

The intermittent rather than constant nature of the problem suggests a poor connection and/or damaged wiring is to blame. The anemometer has functioned when temps have been lowest, suggestive that water ingress into the AWS unit might be a contributing factor.

Weather permitting if the forecast lull does indeed come over during Saturday the Weather Station will be taken apart and checked out, connections cleaned out, cables checked and hopefully it will function OK given the predicated storms. The weather station will if time/weather allows also be switched over to cable link rather than radio link which should improve reporting of stronger gusts due to more frequent sampling.

The mariginal nature of the snow event at times though means the likelyhood of wet driving snow for a time at the SSC Hut level which greatly increases the potential risk for anemometer icing. If anyone has a couple of grand going spare for a heated sensor array, drop us a line!

The router and comms equipment in the SSC hut was shutdown and reset on Thursday afternoon and the Ski Club Hut cameras on CairnGorm Mountain are back on-line and functioning normally.

A replacement webcam box has been installed in Mountain Spirit in Aviemore and we now once again have a low level view looking along Grampian Road in the direction of the Ski Road Roundabout to distant hills. This camera is useful for gauging low level snow events and also early morning check-ups on non-trunk road conditions in wintry weather. The Mountain Spirit webcam is online 24/7 due to it viewing a street lit area.

An additional view looking over the Strath to the Northern Cairngorms will be available shortly, also from Mountain Spirit.

Winterhighland’s Webcam and AWS system at the Scottish Ski Club Hut has been down since late on Monday (5th Jan) due to a communications failure. The exact nature of the problem can not be determiend remotely and a site visit is planned for Thursday 8th Jan.

Providing the issue is not a hardware issue with the router or network equipment it should be possible to restore the webcam and aws feed at some point on Thursday.

In the meantime here’s the final images from Monday afternoon which captured the pefect if chilly weather very nicely:

Every office across the land that has at least one skier or boarder will no doubt have seen productivity drop and bandwidth use rocket today! Snow falling on the webcams at the start of the first significant cold snap of the autumn, yes there was some snow last week and at the start of the Month, but this week things are ramping up another level!

There are weather warnings out from the Met Office for Tuesday, lots of chatter in the weather forums and a real buzz is building. Fellow skiers and boarders… winter is getting closer and for the fist time this new season, the slats on the Ski Club hut’s decks have vanished beneath fresh fluffy snow!

SSC Hut Balcony slats vanish under the snow for the first time this season!

With potentially much cooler air due to sink southwards during the coming week we could well see the first sprinkling of new snow on the peaks.

As of Friday 26th Sept our Aviemore web cam hosted by Mountain Spirit (The place for all your backcountry and telemark gear) is back in place providing a 24hour a day view of the Southern end of Aviemore looking down Grampian Road in the direction of the Ski Road Roundabout.

Unfortunately our mid-mountain cameras on CairnGorm Mountain remain off-line for the time being as the Ski Club Hut is without power during the ground works to repair washout/flood damage to and in the vicinity of the Hill Road just below the mid-station level.

Winterhighland operated it’s own webcams for the first time in winter 2008, with our White Lady webcams being viewed 1,290,923 times during the 2008 season.

Initially 2 then 3 cameras situated in the Scottish Ski Club Hut at 2500ft on CairnGorm Mountain offered a range of views up the White Lady and out over Coire Cas, the camera views have been adjusted for summer and will remain available when the system is not at base for further development to improve the camera system for next winter.

During May Winterhighland has been trialling a Logitech Auto Focus webcam in the SSC Hut, this has given great image quality and we will be looking at upgrading the cameras to give sharper views all round as well as developing a more interactive interface for viewing recent images, archived images and latest cam video clips.

This was partly a developmental system to test out the scope for using relatively low cost but higher grade USB consumer webcams as opposed to expensive IP network cameras - providing scope for utilizing low cost hardware in locations where harsh operating conditions could be expected to shorten the operating life or in some cases destroy IT hardware. The successful use of GPRS in a location with a poor and marginal GSM signal offers greater flexibility for locating cameras and the system provides scope to have camera systems which can be deployed in different buildings and huts to provide the most useful views.

Here’s to there being at least as much snow again to watch on the cameras in 2009.

The webcam system in the Ski Club Hut was restarted and all three webcams and the Weather Station were functioning as normal again as off early afternoon on Sunday.

The earlier mist eventually cleared, though it continued to come in over higher runs at times, but by dusk the skies were clear above Strathspey.

A couple of photos from the Club Hut Balcony looking out over Coire Cas and up the White Lady.

Looking out from the Hut Balcony over towards the Fiacaill.

Unfortunately some sharp wet snow showers in high winds followed by a sudden drop in temperature late on Wednesday evening saw to the anemometer at the Ski Club Hut, which has remained a solid lump of ice since.

If wind direction is changing and the wind speed is reported as zero it’s a good chance that the wind sensor has succumbed to icing.  Drier snow and or cold temps don’t cause problems, its when we go from marginal snow to below freezing that does it.