Benvironment

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!

Hill fog......but definitely snow on the ground from mid-mountain upwards

Oooo, it's now sleeting!!!

This could well turn out to be the coldest day of the season so far up here. Still only 3.5C and doesn't look like budging.

Well it had to end eventually didn't it? A truly beautiful week of sunshine and I can say with confidence I made the best of it.......just in case it's all we get this autumn! Pentlands at the weekend, Ben Venue on Tuesday, Beinn a'Chreachain yesterday. All were sunny and calm and with unrestricted views in every direction. The only thing missing was a foot of snow.....although I did manage to step in a tiny patch of the stuff on Beinn a'Chreachain. And I could see snowy remnants on Stob Binnein and Ben More. Winter's coming!

Winds are worse this morning. The trees are getting quite a trim up here.

Definitely windy out there now. Doesn't sound half as serious as it would if it was a traditional southwesterly gale though. Usually the gales slam into the front of the house and make the windows whistle, but all this northeasterly stuff hits the back where it's mostly stone. Just a steady drone outside instead of a rude, noisy cacophony. And sadly I can't tell you what it's gusting, 'cause the weather station tends to be sheltered from easterly winds.

Warm and settled? News to me! Yesterday was the first day in 22 consecutive days where rain (even if only a few mm) wasn't recorded where I am. We've had a couple of days where there was blue sky for the majority of the day, but at times the wind was touching gale force and it's generally been hovering around 15C. Not great, but provided you've been able to find somewhere in the lee of the wind, it's been warm in the sunshine.

So far this summer we've had ONE day that has reached 20C here. That's worse than last year!

This wee corner of the Lomonds appears to have acquired a rain shield. Been bone dry today while clouds build to other side of Loch Leven and over into Edinburgh. I'm sure it will fail though ;-)

I'm no lover of hot sunny weather but I have to confess to being happy to be away from home just now. Looks bloody miserable in Fife. I've spent the past two weeks in Ontario with wall to wall sunshine and one brief downpour. Now in the Rockies where two months of rain apparently ended the day before I arrived. 30C and sun forecast for the next week. It's like being on another planet.

Sweet relief! 20C at 8am this morning but has been falling steadily throughout the day. 16.3C now

Yep, melting very quickly. I noticed changes even between morning and evening. BUT........there's still enormous potential for touring up on top as there's just so much of the stuff there.

Had a day up on the Cairngorm plateau today. Insanely windy in the morning, touching gale force but it slowly eased throughout the day. Just the weirdest conditions for May, with almost uniform deep snow cover and a warm wind. It was balmy! Mind you, that made the snow the worst kind of Spring sugar that zaps your energy. BUT......what a fantastic day!! Oh and as usual, the first taste of warm weather has lobotomised pedestrians. Their suicidal tendencies are surfacing, with three stepping in front of the car in Falkland alone!

Less a range and more an informal area of hills with a shared geology, but Torridon in Northwest Scotland gets my vote. Monolithic hills rising from blanket bog, airy ridges, quartzite outcrops, sea views, sense of space and some of the most remote walking to be had in Scotland. Just stunning. Edit: Actually I felt suitably inspired by this topic to post some more pics: http://benvironment.org.uk/post/23172593608/torridon

Oops, who left the washing out?

SUN SUN SUN SUN! But I'm in York I suppose. River flooded again down here. Looking forward to getting home to the cold. Just doesn't feel right being warm.

Sun sun sun sun sun! FINALLY a winter walk fitting of winter. I was up in the Cairngorms today in deep snow, dazzled by glare from the snow and applying suncream at frequent intervals. More like February than April up there at the moment, but the extra couple of months really make a difference to the strength of the sun. Quite surreal being in so much snow in Scotland when the sun is that hot. Usually I'd grumble at the other folk walking about up there, but today everyone was wearing the "FINALLY!" grin and I couldn't begrudge anyone being out today. It was a joy to share the hills with like-minded folk. Actually, it felt like every snow-lover in the country had been waiting for a day like that. <sighs>

Been on Rum the past week. It's the third time I've been there for a week-long spell at this time of year and this has by far been the driest I've experienced. No rain whatsoever. Much colder than the last couple of times, but dry, sunny and windy. Just superb! It's been interesting watching enormous clouds brewing over the mainland all week and thinking it looked like snow falling. Proved to be correct driving back from Mallaig last night. Utterly utterly beautiful drive home to Fife with an amazing amount of snow on the hills around Glen Finnan and further south towards Tyndrum. Actually, when I stopped at the Real Food Cafe in Tyndrum (which I heartily recommend for their fish 'n' chips) it was 2C, had clearly been snowing and yet there were folk getting out of the cars with shorts on. Has it been summer weather further south or something!? And then of course to top it all off, I got home and saw the news from Cairngorm about the snow this week. Looks like the snowshoes may actually get used tomorrow.....in April! That's the last thing I expected to happen this year.

It's been bucketing down all morning here while it seems to have been dry not much further east. The Lomonds appear to be generating their own localised wetness today and I'm sat underneath it all. No drought here.

Ooo 'ello. It's snowing!

In the scientific sense I have absolutely no idea......but I don't particularly mind the current trend to 'poor' summers, as I tend to go into hibernation for the duration. I'm an oddball who doesn't enjoy what others term a 'decent' summer. The last few cool, damp ones have been heaven for my hayfever and infinitely more comfortable at night times. Summer's something to suffer, owing to the humidity, sweating, sunburn, light nights, boggy ground, inflated prices, tourist influx and the insanity of midges, ticks, cleggs and wotnot. I emerge from said hibernation in September and October when the first frosts grace the glens and the first snowfalls dust the tops of the hills. I'll be well into my annual slumber by early June. BUT.....even I'd concede that last year was pretty bad. In 12 months there were only 10 days when the temperature exceeded 20C here. Granted that's with a wee bit of height, but even so it's very very poor. April wasn't great. It was warm, yes.....but it was incessantly windy up here, which is why the upland fires took so readily. Okay, even windier than usual. May was a washout and we had 80mph winds towards the end. The power was off for two days. 3rd June was the warmest with 24C I think....and it was all downhill from there, with the wettest summer in Fife since 1916 or something. We had a party at midsummer but it didn't top 11C and the barn filled with fog. Endless, grey, damp, windy days that weren't good for anything other than hoping winter would hurry up and get here.....and we all know how that ended! Depressed yet?

It was just rain up here but was snowing when I got to Edinburgh around 9am. Utterly rancid morning there. Wet, cold and miserable with motionless traffic and enormous tram trenches filling with water. Eurgh!

Lovely green / white mix up here now. The hill road was in a real state yesterday with waste-deep drifts, but it got ploughed so there are still big snow banks most of the way up. In the far distance the fields of Fife are criss-crossed with a white grid where the hedges and fence lines accumulated the most. Looks great! Over the other side of the Forth the western Pentlands look like they caught a fair bit.

Wonderful arctic scenes up here with the wind howling over the Lomonds. Power's been off here since 9am though. <groans>