Wednesday 3rd February will mark another significant milestone in winter 2009/10, seven weeks of consecutive snow lie at even relatively low altitudes in places such as Aviemore. Indeed even here in Central Inverness, you need to go back the same 7 weeks to find a time when the immediate surrounds has been completely snow free and there is a light dusting of fresh this evening as well.

At least some patches of snow on the ground for 7 weeks at ~10m above sea level in Inverness… 7 days of snow lie is quite rare consecutively for low levels!

It’s now officially the coldest December and January period for Scotland as a whole since Scotland wide records begun in 1914. What about the Coldest Winter? Well we’re still a good bit short of the coldest recorded 2 month period and February would need to make the festive period look quite benign to get close the coldest winter record.

However, could this be the fabled Hale Winter everyone was talking about 2 or 3 years ago?

Fresh Snow in Aviemore.

Overnight a period very wet snow / sleet was followed by a sudden drop in temperatures, freezing the wet sticky snow solid to the anemometers on our CairnGorm weather stations at the SSC Hut and the Sheiling.

The Weather Stations were de-iced on Friday afternoon and should remain spinning freely while the temperature remains well below freezing. Problems usually occur when temperature is just around freezing and precipitation falling followed by a drop in temperature.

Iced up Anemometer at the SSC Hut.

De-icing the Sheiling Tow AWS.

Unfortunately the Glencoe webcams are off-line this weekend. This is due to a recurring hardware problem affecting communications, replacement parts are due to arrive on 1st Feb and it is hoped to have the Access Cam and SSC Hut cams back online by the middle of next week, in plenty time for the following weekend.

OK, this is just one distant chart from a suite of some 20 ensemble members from the GFS model, but it’s something pretty special none the less. Complete reversal of the mid latitude zonal winds, Easterly from one side of the chart to the other screaming across the UK.

If such a scenario were to happen it wouldn’t so much be weather, more a complete breakdown of the fundamental laws of physics! Did the Earth’s direction of rotation change?

Just how much snow is on the White Lady, a few feet, six feet, 10 feet even? Here’s a couple of photos of the Funicular from traditional line onto the White Lady (now skiers right of the tunnel) from Feb 2009 and Monday 18th Jan 2010.

Funicular from White Lady 2009, crossing the M1 SideTrack - White Lady underpass.

Funicular crosses the M1 SideTrack - White Lady underpass on Monday 19th Jan 2010.

With the stormy conditions of mid-week due to ease up on Friday morning to give us a weekend with light winds and great snow cover in the East and fresh snow forecast for the early part of Friday, this would be a good weekend to make a weekend of it.

Aviemore is filling up, so if you have a car and wish to have the flexibility to consider taking in another area, we’ve had a sniff around for some cracking offers in other villages in Strathspey for the weekend.

Head South in the Strath for the option of taking in Nevis Range one day. Newtonmore is the ideal base for splitting a weekend between CairnGorm and Nevis Range, or for simply getting a bit more for your £s for a weekend at CairnGorm.

• Bavil Sport Hotel, Newtonmore. Singles from £29.  Twins and Doubles from £39 inc breakfast.
• Highlander Hotel, Newtonmore. Singles from £30. Twins and Doubles from £44 inc breakfast.

Head North in Strathspey to be situated ideally for picking either CairnGorm Mountain or the Lecht.

• Ben Mhor Hotel, Grantown. Singles from £40. Doubles from £50. Family Room (2+2) from £65.
• Ravenscourt House, Grantown. A bit of 4* luxury from just £49.50 for a twin.

Glenshee

For Glenshee, the village of Kirkmichael is often overlooked as a location, but the Kirkmichael Hotel is offering single rooms from £30 for Saturday night and a Family Room (2A +2C) from £70.

Out West

In the West the Ballachulish Hotel lies plumb in the middle between Nevis Range and Glencoe and is offering twin and double rooms from £69. Also in Ballachulish is Fern Villa,  a small family run 3* Guest House offering rooms from £42.

Throwing everything else at the CairnGorm Ski Road to deal with the effects of almost a week of Southerly gales with cold temperatures after almost 2 metres of snow fall since Christmas.

One of the Glencoe webcams had a bit of an oops at the weekend and the SSC Hut cams are now down to allow them to be installed permanently now that the SSC Hut is in regular use. The cams should be back up online by or during the early part of next week. The Access2200 camera remains operational providing a view of the Plateau, Mid Mountain, Main Basin and Rannoch Glades.

The Mountain Spirit webcam in Aviemore has suffered a technical problem that has not responded to rebooting the system and a site visit is planned for Thursday to give it a proverbial kick.

While a thaw is now affecting many lower parts of Scotland there is certainly no thaw in the hills and only the slightest one away from Coastal areas.

The blanket of snow outside remains complete here next to the centre of Inverness, the street  a tarmac free zone since before Christmas Eve. Wednesday morning saw the snow notch up another milestone, 4 weeks of consecutive snow lie at not quite 10m ASL in Inverness.

Stop and think about that, it’s really quite hard to grasp in a way, but when the slow thaw becomes a faster thaw and eventually the snow is gone from low ground, it’s actually going to seem kinda weird.  The lack of wind for the main part of this cold spell prevented the spell reaching the severity of the ‘79 and it’s still far to early to tell if the winter will go the way of a 1963. Never the less it has been a remarkable spell of weather, the three weeks of ever improving conditions that by Friday 8th had moved from epic to pretty much historical on CairnGorm Mountain had been achieved without a day lost to weather.

How that has changed since the weekend, ferocious winds coupled with 185cm of straight down snow fall still lying loose and unconsolidated means the drifting and extent of the snow redistribution on CairnGorm Mountain has been simply phenomenal, with long stretches of the down road from Coire Cas under 13ft of snow. The depth may not beat any Ski Road records, but the sheer extent of the road under such depths seems to be up there, with even the snowblower overwhelmed. Such drifting has not been restricted to the high mountains, above about 1000ft (lower in places) the snow is still loose to drift with all roads across the Dava Moor choked with snow this evening and traffic on the A9 being convoyed over Drumochter at times during Wednesday.

Can anoyone remember a longer spell of low level snow in the Inverness Area?