Snow on the Scottish Mountains.

[johnholmes]

21 hours ago, balir said:

Good evening folks, 

Although I spent a fair bit of time following some of the great discussions on here and trying to learn a bit more about weather I rarely post anything myself. There is obviously a fair few people on here that have similar interest in weather, and in particular, in snow as myself. Over the past year or so I have seen a couple of my photos posted here, for example the picture of Easy Gully with the first proper snow of the winter in it back at the end of October last year, or the picture of the big cornice from last February.

 

Below is what Aonach Mor was looking like last Friday (20th March).

I hope you don't mind a wee bit of self promotion, but I have just written piece on snow cover in Lochaber (with a number of nice snowy shots) that some of you might enjoy, particularly as we can't really get to the hills at the moment. I have also written some stuff of my time earlier this year working as field guide on the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration in Antarctica, a project that got a fair amount of media coverage. These can all be found here;

Blair Fyffe, Climbing and Things

BLAIRFYFFE.BLOGSPOT.COM

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Hope it provides you some interest/entertainment or at least a pleasant distraction for everything else which is going on at the moment. 

Blair 

Thank you Blair I will have a good read of your Antarctic spell, I never got down there although I always hoped to, take care

[Polar Maritime]

Scottish Snow Patches Report 2019/2020 | theWeather Club

WWW.THEWEATHERCLUB.ORG.UK

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Iain Cameron and Blair Fyffe have just published the 24th annual report on the survival of Scottish snow patches in July’s issue of...

 

[Northernlights]

Still skiing on Cairngorm where I notice the summit has been down to  nearly freezing in the last couple of days

 

[Mr Frost]

Snow patches also remain up on Glencoe!

Webcams - Glencoe Mountain Resort

WWW.GLENCOEMOUNTAIN.CO.UK

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Click to refresh the page Click a thumbnail to view larger webcam view  or scroll down for slideshow.

Really was a fantastic Spring snow season up on the mountains with regards to snow depth, conditions and of course the all round perfect Spring weather - unfortunately as we all know...Covid-19 put an end to any chance of us enjoying it.
Would probably have been a record season for visitor numbers skiing/snowboarding.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Mr Frost

[Mr Frost]

It is that time of the year again! 

Recent tweets from Iain Cameron - great man to follow throughout the season!

 

 

Looking forward to many mountain hikes over the next few months - hopefully plenty of snowy scenes! 

All the best to you all.

[Polar Maritime]

Ooow

[damianslaw]

Not surprised to see the first appreciable snowfalls of the new season, cold polar airmass, low dewpoints and thicknesses in a showery disturbed airstream. Quite commonplace for this point in the year.

[balir]

 

I went for a walk up Aoanch Mor today to have a look at the snow that fell on Thursday night/Friday. There was a pretty continuous band around the rim of Coire an Lochan. I used an avalanche probe to measure the depth, the deepest spot was near the ski poles visible in the top picture (the top of Easy Gully) was just under a meter in depth. 

Visible in the second picture are two patches a little further down the hill. These are patches of last year's snow. In the Lochaber hills six patches of last year's snow remain; the two seen in the photo above on Aonach Mor, one on Aonach Beag and three in various locations on Ben Nevis. It is almost certain that the Aoanch Beag patch will survive to become incorporated into next winter's snow pack, and likely the Aonach Mor patches will also survive. The patches on Ben Nevis are more vulnerable, with the one in Coire Na Ciste in particular looking pretty small. The forecast is generally cool with perhaps a bit more snow on the higher tops in the next few days, which is good. This cool weather will slow down the melting, but we won't know for sure until the proper lasting winters snows arrive that the snow patch locations. 

[balir]

Some years patches of snow survive all year round on the North Face of Ben Nevis. This has not happened for a number of years now, I think that last year this occurred was 2016.  However, this year things are looking more positive. Last winter's snow remains in three locations on the Ben; the base of Point Five Gully, Observatory Gully and a tiny patch in Coire na Ciste. On Friday I visited the former two locations. The first picture shows the Point Five Patch from Friday, it is pretty substantial and almost certain to survive. I had also visited this location back in mid-August, and the next couple of photos from then show the patch and an impressive snow tunnel that had formed. 

Being slightly higher on the mountain Observatory Gully had caught a bit more fresh snow on Friday (photos 4 and 5). Although the old is is not quite as substantial as the Point Five Patch, I would say very likely to survive. The final two pictures show this same patch back in August. 

Since Friday, it was very wet and mild yesterday, and wet and a bit cooler today. I think the rain on Saturday would have melted all the fresh snow at the Observatory Gully patch. However, it might just have been cold enough for wet snow at that level today. Fortunately the forecast is colder for the next few days with some fresh snow, which will hopefully be the lasting snow for these locations.  

 

[Polar Maritime]

http://geographical.co.uk/uk/uk/item/3878-scotland-s-snow-hunters-tracking-the-last-remaining-patches

[Blessed Weather]

Iain Cameron tweeting this photo of the surviving snow patch at Aonach Beag, Ben Nevis range, on 29th November:

"We are rapidly coming to the end of another snow-patch season. Heavy snow is forecast during the week, with Scotland’s lowest patch on Aonach Beag almost covered. This one is larger than all the others combined, >50m long and 2m deep. Quite remarkable."

Photo by A. Kish. Twitter @theiaincameron

On the 17th November Iain was saying how worried he was for surviving patches in the Scottish Mountains with the ongoing mild weather, so thankfully (and finally) some decent snowfall and much colder weather arriving during the coming week. Should be some good pics soon.

Here's the forecasts up to this coming Friday, 4th Dec:

Arpege:  GFS:

 

[summer blizzard]

Did snow survive all year this time.

[Spindrift2017]

The final tally should be around eight patches surviving from last winter, I think. Possibly one or two more depending on how patches that have split are counted.

All are either in the Cairngorms, the Aonachs (as per post above) or the gullies on the north side of Ben Nevis.

Heavy snowfalls on westerlies with a polar maritime influence during February and March eventually built snow up to big depths in the usual drift locations, after very lean conditions for much of winter. There wasn’t much late spring snow this year either. The very dry and settled spring and rather cool September/October probably helped a lot.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Spindrift2017

[Blessed Weather]

Wow! What a wonderful photo of the Ptarmigan restaurant on Cairn Gorm. And with a very snowy outlook the restaurant is in danger of disappearing completely! The sad thing is, the mountain is currently closed for skiing. Such a shame, it would be epic up there.

Photo courtesy of Gary Tarmachan and Iain Cameron. Twitter @theiaincameron

[hillbilly]

Does anyone know how the snow is looking in Scotland?

 

[matty40s]

Still plenty at Glencoe

[balir]

There is a reasonable amount of snow up high in the Cairngorms. The pictures were taken on Saturday the 20th. 

Looking Garbh Coire Mor.  Britain's longest lying snowpatches sit at the back of the deepest coire. I would say that the amount of snow is about average for the time of year. 

Still pretty uniform cover heading over to Ben MacDui

I wrote a wee piece about the amount of snow in the Lochaber hills for the SAIS blog about 10 days ago. Again I would say pretty average for the time of year. See 

SAIS Lochaber Blog » How Much Snow?

LOCHABERBLOG.SAIS.GOV.UK

 

 

[Arch Stanton]

I'd hope / expect that a good amount of snow patches would survive this year because of favourable conditions that stretch back to December, with only a few very brief milder interludes in that time.

From what I've seen the freezing level in the Central / Northern Munros has been stuck around 400m all winter

 

Edited March 25, 2021 by Arch Stanton

[Polar Maritime]

Scottish Snow Patches Report for 2020

WWW.RMETS.ORG

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Thanks to heavy snow and south-westerly winds, some snow patches survived throughout the year.