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

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.

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.

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

Hello there, I don't normally post much on here, but have enjoyed the interesting discussions on Netweather for quite a few years now. I see that the pictures from the two days I had looking at snow last week have already appeared on this thread. Therefore I thought it might be worth posting that I have written a little about those days, and links to a few other snow related discussions, here on my blog http://blairfyffe.blogspot.co.uk/ I hope that it is okay to link to this, I thought that some of you might find it quite interesting. Keep up the good work in regards to all the interesting threads on this site. Thanks Balir