skifreak

Some funky light at sunset / dusk over Inverness earlier, happened to be around Eden Court at just the right time!

But the model thread is 10x worse!

Funky light at on the slopes of Meall a' Bhuiridh at the moment. Glencoe will be running the Access Chairlift this weekend, but not quite enough snow for any of the surface tows to run - but enough for sledging and anyone willing to hike or with touring kit will be able to get some turns in. It's getting closer....

A few Pix from around the lower part of CairnGorm late this afternoon: http://www.winterhighland.info/pix/pixalbum.php?pix_id=1201 There's a few more in the forum from people who were out touring. Should have brought my skis, could easily have skinned up and skied back to the Carpark with hindsight!

630ft higher in Inverness than me... everyone take a carryout round to Northern Rab's hoose the 'morrow night?

How did that get past the swear filter?

What if it is reacting to signals we can't sense?

Is it Flarum by any chance?

Happy to help (break it)... well isn't that what beta testing is for! As above, would be interested to know what've you're thinking of shifting to, is it in house?

I was on CairnGorm for part of the day and contrary to the Met Office App which told me it would be part cloudy with sun and a <5% chance of rain at noon at the Base Station, where I was standing outside at noon and it was peeing it down! You couldn't see beyond the front of your nose either, guess the light NE breeze was taking moisture in off the Firth. Car in the garage so had taken the bus up and hadn't been prepared for the downpours so got a bit drookit as I had a very warm but waterproof as a tea bag jacket on! #shouldknowbetter

Snow on the mountains on Tuesday morning, but a pleasant afternoon in Inverness. Could almost pass off this photo as summer!

Late to this, but you could try an inspeed vortex with an electrical sensor from Yoctopuce - depends if you are technically minded with computers and stuff, there's a lot of info and software / scripting help on the Yoctopuce website. i had high hopes for the Peet Bros Pro annemoter, but while in theory that each bit of it is replaceable the spindle on which the vane sits is a weak point and >80mph if it's getting harsh gusts or rapid direction changes it will break, vane hits the deck and cups take off and vanish!

Well winter 2014 was milder than the poor winter of 2012 in the Scottish mountains. No lift served Snowsports the whole of March in 2012, unprecedented since commercial operations begun. Yet 2 years on an even milder winter delivered the most snow to Western mountains in living memory. A re-run of 2014 I'd take (going to get lynched by most for saying that probably)!

Things seem to have calmed down in Inverness compared to a few hours ago, might be a different story in the morning! Seen gusts of 75mph at the base of Glencoe's Access Chair at the edge of Rannoch Moor earlier and there was a HGV blown off the A82 between Fort William and Corran Ferry early evening.

The last few years have certainly been interesting in winter terms for the Scottish hills. As the blog post notes winter 2013/14 was the 5th warmest in a 100 years and the stormiest on record. That winter was milder than the very poor 2012 Scottish Ski Season, yet brought the most snow in living memory to the Western and Central Highland mountains. So I'd not say no to winter 2010, or early winter 2010/11 repeat, but we've seen both some of the coldest and mildest winters deliver huge snowfalls to the Scottish Mountains! Personally I'd rather take a huge snow year in the mountains over low level snow than get some good snow events at sea level for a mediocre winter in the mountains. On that note, I'll put on my hard hat and dive for cover!

Money isn't the sole problem with the MWIS situation - Geoff Monk has said before that he didn't want to go on and on and would be looking to retire at some point. I've heard in the past from various sources that continuity of the service and access to Met Office model data are issues. There is a political side too around the role of the met office in Scotland and funding. It's another potential example of Scottish taxpayers having to pay twice for UK level services if MWIS became a met office operation. Perhaps it requires more money to take on and suitably train meteorologists for a very specific forecasting niche. Part of the problem is there isn't a ready pool of climbing, hill walking and skiing qualified meteorologists with intimate knowledge of the Scottish Mountains!

There's a significant difference between a forecast for naff weather and a forecast that maybe goes wrong, and a TV forecast set-up that misrepresents the forecast weather for a large portion of Scotland because of a false and misleading map projection (which compromises the level of detail and info that can be provided).

That doesn't address the inadequacies of the BBC network forecasts though. Viewers in the rest of the UK don't get the Scotland forecasts, so regional forecasts don't address the valid concerns of tourism businesses in Highland Scotland. We're not asking for special treatment for Scotland in the forecasts, just the same as the South of the UK. If the TV licence was as geographically tapered as the BBC forecast map perhaps what we pay in Scotland would better reflect what the BBC spends on services in Scotland!

That doesn't make a KM shorter in Northern Scotland and longer in the South of England as the BBC map does. An approximate area calculation on the map I posted suggests it's fairly close to a 'same scale' map - each part of the land mass looking as it would appear if you were directly above it. The BBC weather map on the other hand has England having a surface area slightly over 3x that of Scotland, where as England actually has 1.62x the land mass of Scotland. In terms of spatial resolution of the projected weather data, that means there's effectively space for only half as much information over Scotland as there should be. This alongside the switch from round to square temperature symbols mean fewer temperature points are provided for Scotland and only exposed coastal locations. One of the standard locations for a temperature symbol on the UK wide map is Rosehearty which juts out into the sea in the NE corner near Fraserburgh. We no longer have a non coastal temperature that gives anything approaching a reasonable representation of temperature for the Northern Highlands, the Central Highlands or inner Moray Firth, or indeed for most of inland Scotland. That gives a completely distorted representation of the weather to go along with the distorted map, it fails to indicate cold weather adequately in winter and in decent summer weather the maximum temperature shown on a BBC weather map in the North of Scotland can be as much as 12ºc below the actual highest recorded in the Central Highlands. That factor is a genuine business grievance in the tourism sector in this part of the world.

A wee graphic showing a 'same scale' map of the UK overlaid over the current BBC weather map.

Beautiful evening in Inverness. This is turning into quite a nice dusk riverside walk...

Pertinent first question on the blog - will the new graphics represent Scotland at the SAME scale as Southern England?

I'll have a turquoise thanks.

Was in Orkney on Wednesday and stayed on the Hamnavoe overnight in Stromness, pretty good deal B&B for £57 for a cabin that sleeps 2, with complimentary evening snacks and refreshments in the onboard lounge. Decent day on Wednesday for a wonder around Stromness, then caught the bus through to Kirkwall. Monsoon conditions by the time I arrived back in Scrabster, but I doubt a smoother crossing of the Pentland Firth has ever been had, as well as light winds, tide must have been favourable as usually there's a fair swell even in light winds.

I'm going to a wee village outside Estepona to meet up with family for a week on 7th October, fantastic week likely in the Highlands.