Another source of local weather information is the Scottish Avalanche Information Service. Reports in Glencoe are usually prepared after assessing conditions on mountains around the Glencoe Ski Centre and the Lochaber forcast is taken from around the Nevis Range area. This gives current conditions and next day forecast - might just help folks to make decisions - in conjunction with other sources of info - this is no substitute for up to date reports from ski centres - but every little helps if you're unsure about latest conditions. www.sais.gov.uk/latest_forecast

Alrighty folks,

Here's a quick guide to all the web sites that I have got bookmarked - and find useful for forecasting Scottish mountain weather.

The links are all for Glencoe (yes I am biased ).
Since the hill has been closed during the week these sites allow you to make a good guess of the conditions.

Geoff Monk forecast for West Scotland. For a 5 day mountain weather forecast this seems to be the BEST forecast. From experience it is fairly reliable. If the charts are unpredictable then he seems to say so (rather than make it up).

http://home.btconnect.com/geoffmonk/mountain/WH.PDF

Snow forecast - a useful site. Not convinced their models are totally accurate for Scotland though, and it doesn't take account of drifting either.

http://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Glencoe.0to3top.php

The official ski reports. Generally the Nevis Range ski report can be used to estimate conditions at Glencoe during the week. Usually I find that all the ski centre publish reliable reports these days...

http://ski.visitscotland.com

BBC 5 day forecast for Fort William. This is usually pretty accurate as it comes from the met office. Divide the temperatures by 2 then multiply by 1000 to get the freezing level. So 6 degrees is a freezing level of 3000ft (laps rate).

[www.bbc.co.uk]

As liz mentioned, the sais avalanche forecast also gives daily information on the snow cover.

http://www.sais.gov.uk/latest_forecast/

Winternet Scotland - a collection of www cams from all over scotland. The Buchaille web cam gives a good idea of how much snow is up Glencoe. Theres always more snow on Meall A Bhuridh than the aspect of the Buchaille that it visible though. Its also worth remembering that the top of the Buchaille is approx same height as the start of the main basin t-bar.

www.winternet-scotland.co.uk

Cheers

Doug.


p.s. All the long range forecasts (greater than 5 days) such as "www.theweatheroutlook.co.uk" seem to be a waste of time. I guess its not possible to forecast weather that far ahead. www.born2ski.co.uk isn't bad - but not updated often enough to be of any use.



Post Edited (16:20 hrs on Wed 04 Feb 04)

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Post Edited (16:26 hrs on Wed 04 Feb 04)

Doug, I've edited your post to make the URL's active links.

By the way a word of caution about the BBC 5 day forecasts, they are prone to absolute crackers of errors, they are entirely computer generated, by extrapolating from raw model data with no human input at all.

Rather than looking at deterministic forecasts based on one model run 5days out, you'll get a better feel for possible trends by looking at the synoptic charts that are produced from the model data. For instance you can look and say well in five days time the 5-day forecast says mild and wet, but if that ridge of high pressure slipped a bit further west, actually we'd be in cold NW'lys. The difference between 2001 and 2003 underlines the difference only subtle differences in the synoptic patterns can make to our weather!

If you look at more than one forecast you get some idea or the uncertainties and the possible scenarios, if they all say the same thing, good chance it will come off, if they're all going at different tangents, its a difficult call.

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Hello!

The weather pattern seems to be one of some snow followed by a serious thaw/rain, then more snow again, then repeat the thaw/rain etc

Presumably, we are not going to get anything like a decent base built up if this continues.

Has any other winter shown this particular pattern?

Bye for now

Jim

As a point of interest, the CET (Central England Temperature) Index for Jan has been confirmed at +1.5°c above the 1961 to 1990 average. This is the same as Jan 1994, also +1.5°c above the 61 to 1990 average.

While there were some interesting similarities to 93/94 in the autumn of 2003, we have sort of had a january that could be described as a half-way house between 1994 and 1998, on of the best and worst seasons on record. We're definitely getting the snow, but we're not getting any consolidation before a week long savage thaw sets in. This cold week, mild week cycle is a bit unusual, and very frustrating.

A few months back I commented (and wasn't alone in this) that it would be all or nothing, right now it has potential to still do either, so the next two weeks are pretty critical. We still have a base in key and hard to fill burn gullies, and that is more than half the battle, if we get more snow and some consolidation with much thawing over the next week or so we'll be looking good, if it were to continue thawing we'd risk loosing that the key base put down in the Hogmanay storm and we'd be starting a 1998 doomsday scenario in the face again.

At present the forecast models are going with the first good news outcome for next week, but only small changes to the track of weather systems would keep us in the warm sector for 3or 4 days at a time instead of one. Fingers crossed!

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