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.

Unexpected heavy snow showers on Thursday afternoon saw the Glenmore Gates get closed for the remainder of the afternoon as the road became increasingly icy, rather than from amount of snow. The showers did however put down another 2 or 3 inches higher up.

It had been hoped to visit the Webcam Installation in the Ski Club Hut to check up on it and try to clear the windows. There is an ongoing data communication issue since the storm, due to a data service problem with the local mast after Wednesdays Storm.

Taking a short walk along the shore  of Loch Morlich around dusk alone apart from a few ducks, the mist suddenly cleared revealing a pinkish sunset amongst the snow clouds, and brief glimpse of Coire Cas (See Pix from the Slopes).

Friday promises more settled weather ahead of a great Saturday, but stormy Sunday. An attempt to de-ice the window of the SSC hut will be made, but if it’s not possible a few sunny spells should help as it’s facing South.

At the moment the mist started to clear in Coire Cas, I was very impressed with the width of cover on the Cas… only as the mist cleared slightly further I realised it wasn’t the Coire Cas Tow, but the Carpark Tow I had been looking at. The lower mountain is absolutely loaded.

It was a fair question as to why when installing a webcam on a mountain it was looking predominately at wooden decking and a fence. Partly to ensure that the there was always something in view with which to gauge the visibility - plus we hoped the decking would be useful to gauge new snow falls on and the extent to which snow was falling vs drifting.

Whiteout conditions affect the Gorm as hurricane force winds on the upper mountain fill the air with snow on Wed 9th Jan 2008. Unfortunately an hour later communication with the webcams was lost after the storms started affecting mobile data coverage in the area.

I am lead to believe that the system is currently connecting via a more distant cell, this is reducing reliability and heavier snow showers are causing intermittent drop outs in the signal.

Following a rather damp and misty afternoon slide up top on CairnGorm, the walk from the bottom back up to the Ski Club Hut at 2500ft was undertaken to check up on the webcams and make some modifications.

The changes included renaming the images from the additional third camera to mid.jpeg and setting the existing two cameras to upload short video clips each hour.

The latest images from the three cameras can be found at www.winterhighland.info/testcam

Video Clips can be accessed by clicking the video icon/link at the top of each image and each camera also stores 6 images from the past hour.

He who issues an rm * command in unix without first double checking which directory he is in can expect a long night….. sigh!

It’s a cracker of a day in the Central Highlands, blue sky, still and frosty. Not a true white Christmas but a definite festive tinge from the frost. Hope Santa was good to you, maybe we should ask him for some snow making next year?

Have a great day and don’t over indulge (too much!)

Firstly a huge thank you to the new Eden Court for making this superb evening possible and to all who came along and packed out Eden Court’s brand new La Scala cinema to bursting point for helping make this such an amazing evening.

A shout must go out to Black Diamond for providing Warren Miller’s Playground, to Craigdon for help promoting the night, selling tickets and additional goodies to give away and finally a huge big shout to the crew in Eden Court’s cinema and marketing departments for their efforts to promote PLAYGROUND and for getting us on the first inside page in the special re-opening edition of the What’s On guide !!

The brand new state of the art cinema provided superb audio and video that truly brought the magic of PLAYGROUND to life, the packed cinema giving the night an extra buzz. Piles of Goodies given out and hope all who won something enjoyed their prizes, hope that amazing 7 in 1 Columbia jacket fitted, damn wish I didn’t have to give it away….

We know some people were disappointed and unable to get tickets on the day, we hope to be back around the same time with even more goodies and another mind blowing film next year, so to be sure not to miss out get your tickets in advance as soon as we announce their on sale. Hope to see everyone who was there on the slopes this winter.

After opening weekend it’s back to the weather Roller Coaster this week as the Atlantic really roars in to life unleashing a bought of zonality that comes with one of those dreaded full on South Westerly assaults on Tuesday.

Whether our recently formed early season base is either consolidated or robust enough for the top at CairnGorm to come through remains to be seen, we will just have to wait and see.

However don’t be too despondent to have had a base at all is actually quite good for this stage of the game as early season turns are often on baseless snow and the early part of December is traditionally a mild, wet and often stormy time.

Graphs of the average 850hpa (approx 4500ft) temperature actually show a rising trend for early December as we climb out of a marked November dip, before average temps start to drop off again later in the month as the decline towards thermal mid-winter in the second part of February begins. (see below)

Tuesday looks to be the worst day with winds exceeding 100mph in stronger gusts on the tops and Munro Level temperatures nudging painfully close to double figures for a time.

There will however be some snow preceding and following the warm sectors this week, much will depend on timing and exact tracks of the storms. The further North they track unfortunately the wider the mild sector we’re exposed to.

It doesn’t provide much comfort to skiers and boarders but it’s not uncommon to see the Scottish Mountains stripped completely in the first half of December, indeed even in bumper winters like 2001 the big snows of November 2000 were almost completely obliterated in the mild, wet and stormy first half of December. On the Gorm anyway only limited snow in the Top Basin and where it had been packed down by funicular construction traffic on the Traverse held out.

It’s also contrary to increasingly popular belief not a new phenomenon. V A Firsoff wrote in his 1949 book ‘The Cairngorms on foot and ski’: “In November and December there may be considerable precipitation at higher levels, as a rule accompanied by high winds, but Old Yule is more often black than white and the heavy snows do not come till the second half of January, sometimes not even then.”

That was very true of the 2001 season as well, January was cold, but largely dry, surface conditions were often decent, but the runs were very narrow, it wasn’t till the tail end of the month and first days of February that the first big snow storms since late November arrived.

Any sliding done in Scotland before Hogmanay is a bonus, snow often comes between Christmas and New Years Day, but even January historically is still early season in Scotland. Spring is King and the best snows often don’t come till March or even into early April. So please don’t put the toys back in the loft at Christmas!