skifreak

Well to be fair, this has a bit of a 2012 feeling about it. The Scottish Ski Season came to a grinding halt after mid February, not a single ski lift run for snowsports in March 2012, yet this was Coire Cas on CairnGorm on Sat 12th May 2012!

So Storm Frank... you want to tell the people flooded out of large parts of Ballater, that it wasn't a real storm? Just a wet and windy day that obliterated from existence a couple of hundred yards of the A93, left a bridge at Braemar unstable so that the only way in and out was over the 2200ft Cairnwell Pass which had to be kept open 24/7 through January and February? That the arches on the A90 Bridge of Dee went full bore for the first time in 488 years was just a damp winters day? Just a wee breeze that Frank, a breeze that ripped a roof of a chairlift drive at Glencoe ski area with such force it smashed a hole in a building further up the mountain and knocked a ski lift tower out of alignment before disintegrating, maybe tell the owner of the car overturned in the carpark at 1200ft at Glencoe that Storm Frank wasn't actually real wind? Some serious pish gets posted in this thread.

Life ban for language like that!

Well some of the ensemble members are certainly interesting from my perspective, cold zonality sort of pattern with screaming westerlies and the FL close to the surface in Highland Scotland! Could be epic for Glencoe and Nevis Range!

Completely off topic, but been watching this traffic cam in South Lake Tahoe, California for long enough to have got booted off! US-50 : South Lake Tahoe : Hwy 50 at Ski Run CWWP2.DOT.CA.GOV Caltrans image and video for US-50 : South Lake Tahoe : Hwy 50 at Ski Run

That is extremely worrying, shut the snowgates before it even starts snowing because it might flurry.

You moved to Perth for snow?

Now have an EV. Nothing fancy, it’s a van, but I like the heating timer and the ability to pre-heat it on the mains before unplugging. Had it up to 2600ft on a gravel track, amazing traction for a bog standard 2wd van. Thus curious to see what it is like in snow! Compiling a mental list of the still free rapid chargers !

2 snow buntings, but 3 ptarmigan!

Just had a decent rumble sitting outside a pub in central Glasgow ! [edit] incoming

Well I chose the wrong day to get the 13.26 train South from Inverness by the look of things!

The colder and snowier it is the more I'll be outside enjoying it, so less need for heating at home!

Well I got pretty drenched in central inverness without a jacket about 11 last night - nothing forecast (less than 5% precip risk) and nowt on the radar, and no it wasn’t the council watering the flowers!

Inverness airport reporting 23ºc - currently in central Inverness and getting 24c. Looks to be 14 to15c above the 850hpa temperature, if that was repeated on the upper end of the ensembles for Tuesday mid 30s would be in play. Mind boggling.

Good time to have taken the old road !

Looks like it’s back to rain at least mid level on CairnGorm vs snow piling up at the Lecht!

Well that's a bit of a spectacular drop in snow totals across the board for the mountains...

If some of the model output comes off the Lecht could be fully open next weekend! ️

Some of the runs and ensemble members look more like red than yellow! With regard to the question were the hills as bare in the 1988/89 winter - yes, CairnGorm didn't ski at all until mid-Feb, Sat 18th Feb they opened with one third of the Coire Cas T-bar in use loading at the top of the Gunbarrel and getting off were the main run crosses the T-bar 2/3rds of the way up!

Yes, 6 to 10quid at Argos. However, the PSTN copper network is due to be switched off in Dec 2024 - interesting to see what if any contingency is put in place. We frankly should have been laying single mode fibre to premises / homes since the early 1980s, though the basic copper telephone network does have the advantage that the phone is powered by the exchange line. However there does seem to have been quite a few exchanges go offline in recent storms entirely. I’ve older relatives that were flown around in RAF sea kings delivering charged batteries and fuel for topping up generators around telephone exchanges that couldn’t be reached by road in the Highlands.

Is a factor here not just the wind direction that the strongest winds have come from, but we’ve gone a number of winters without particularly notable storms. Certainly on the mountains, the ski areas haven’t had particularly big damaging storms come through for a few winters, not on the scale of Storm Frank that ripped roofs of buildings, blew in vehicles windows even at relatively low levels like the Glencoe carpark at just over 1000ft, overturned vehicles in the Coire Cas Carpark on CairnGorm etc!

Having a flick through charts for something more palatable, looks like lows to our north putting a squeeze on things and it could get pretty blowy particularly far North and the hills later in the week towards the weekend, but that could just be the warm up act for really stormy spell early February, and colder too? Very little snow in Jan 2020 on the hills either, then February, particularly in the West brought lots of snow and was persistently stormy into mid March. Would take a repeat of 2020 weather from here given the spring we had!

Oh and welcome back HC from one also been AWOL for a while! Hopefully we’re back for an inner Moray Firth snow fest! ️

Would take Feb 20 to mid end May 20 repeat! February 2020 brought huge amounts of snow to the Scottish Ski Areas, season was morphing into an epic when Covid pulled the plug. Have seen some charts in the ensembles suggesting the Northern Highlands could see 50cm plus of snow, while South of the Great Glen and thus the ski areas see next to nothing. Risk the blizzards could get South of Shetland to the mainland and still not benefit the ski areas!

Since we’re off topic, golf courses were not required to shut under Level 4 restrictions in Scotland and the ski areas went into the season with roughly the same operating criteria as golf courses for level 4 operations. (However, golf courses and tennis courts were closed in all 3 England lockdowns - so media coverage has often been misleading on the status of golf in Scotland). The only lift served skiing last season at Glencoe, Glenshee and the Lecht took place under Level 4 - lockdown, but the rules were changed from 5th January. The intention was to keep ski centres, golf courses and tennis courts / clubs open for outside activities. What appears to have changed was HIE closed down CairnGorm Mountain on Christmas Eve and made a big song and dance about how responsible they were being and that they were looking after the local commiunity, this set the precedent and HIE heavily lobbied to get the ski sector shutdown to stop the other areas getting ahead of CairnGorm. I’ve heard and seen enough stuff in the industry to be sure in my mind that it wasn’t Covid that shut the ski areas on 5th January 2021, it was HIE malfeasance.