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.

The webcams and weather station at the Ski Club Hut on CairnGorm have been experiencing communication difficulties and the system appears to have gone down as a result.

Increased visitor numbers in the area could be contributing to less network availability. A site visit to check on the system will be undertaken on Sunday morning and if neccessary refresh rates will be turned down to try and help get regular images through.

This will be updated from CairnGorm on Sunday morning with further info.

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.

Wednesday afternoon ahead of the approaching winter storms we’re expecting over the coming few days we’ve installed a couple of low level webcams in Mountain Spirit (Backcountry Snowsports Shop) located towards the South end of Aviemore on Grampian Road.

This is a fairly temporary set up at present to assess the value of low level cameras to compliment the on mountain cameras. One camera is providing a widescreen format panorama of the distant Cairngorms and we hope will be useful for assessing snow level and cloud base / visibility.

A second camera provides a low level view of the Southern end of Grampian Road in Aviemore. Situated at 690feet, this will be useful for gauging lower level snow falls and thus road conditions in spells of wintry weather as well as seeing what the weathers doing all the time. Unlike the other cameras this camera updates all night and the road provides an excellent indication of whether it’s dry or wet!

Please remember we’re just testing this out, we’re unsure of how useful these cameras will be a distance from the mountain, but the Aviemore view in itself should be useful.

Unfortunately due to deteriorating weather conditions it was decided to abort an attempt to get the third camera working at the Ski Club Hut. With the Funicular closed due to wind, deteriorating overhead and expected ice underfoot it wasn’t looking like a good move to carry computer gear (including my laptop!) up the Home Road.

Initial fears that the AWS at the SSC Hut had been damaged by the wind (it was recording wind speeds of 88mph shortly before loss of data - and the wind had been gusting to 165mph at the Summit) proved unfounded and the data feed restored shortly after 4pm on Saturday.

The AWS sensors are wired together but not currently hard-wired to the console/computer and thus the sensors are running on battery power. It looks as if the wild weather was shaking the temperature sensor so much that the batteries were failing to make contact all the time and after a certain number of drop outs the Console gives up attempts to communicate to preserve it’s own batteries.

Hard wiring the set-up will give more frequent wind measurements (thus we expect more accurate as the AWS stands a better chance of recording higher gusts) but as the system was primarily installed for temperature and humidity data an element of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ makes me wary of changing the set-up at this stage.

As of yesterday evening the Automatic Weather Station has been unable to connect to the external sensors. This will be investigated later.

Webcams have been restored to 4 minute updates since mid-week and are updating 45mins before sunrise till 25minutes after sunset. This should ensure a reasonably bright last image is up all evening/night, but ensure the first images are out as soon as there is sufficient light for the cameras to function. You can check 6 images from the past hour as well as an archive for the last 10 hourly images on the webcam page at www.winterhighland.info/testcam .

The last of the snow clouds cleared to leave a perfect but fading blue sky above CairnGorm Mountain at dusk. Flat calm, still and frosty, and the forecasts promise Saturday will dawn just as Friday ended.

A couple of photos for now, a full report and more photos in Pix from the Slopes later.

Looking up Coire Na Ciste and over under the Chair to the Aonach Bowl and Aonach Ridge beyond. Skiable to the Ciste Carpark.

The webcams in the SSC hut are updating at five minute intervals to try and improve reliability while it’s relying on very limited bandwidth. They have been set to start updates before 7am, so you can see how it’s shaping up from as soon as there is enough light.