[Scotland & The Far North Of England Regional Weather Chat]

From 7pm last night until 7pm tonight i have recorded 100.5mm of rain here in F.W.

No sign of the rain going off any time soon. This could well be the wettest spell in this town for several years....

The only glimmer of light with regards to flooding is the fact that there is no snow melt taking place on the mountains otherwise things could be a whole lot worse.

[Snow And Ice In The Northern Hemisphere 2012/13]

That's great Hammer for my web cam spoting but I wonder if its yet another over estimation, as I see a forcast 2degC on Ben Nevis Tuesday eve (Sorry to spoil the fun)

Norway and Svalbard have under achieved so far wonder if the meto can do better than yr.no Its seems that if the snow is overestimated at least it does not put people in danger like going the other way would.

I live in Fort William and i am confident that we will see the first noticeable but brief snowfall of the Autumn on Nevis Range.

Mountain snow fall in September is not particularly unusual but 'lasting' snows until the following winter are exceptionally rare in September such as the falls that occurred at the Cairngorm mountains in early Sept 76 following the famously hot summer that year ,particularly south of the border.

Keep your eyes on the Aonach Mor webcams on Tue for a dusting near the summit.

[Scotland Regional Discussion - Autumn]

Just seen a forecast from the Met Office over on Winterhighland for Aonach Mor for Monday 30th of July for sleet and snow on the top. Not good news. A question for the more knowledgeable members. Where is the cold coming from when all I read in the Arctic Melt thread is about above average air and sea temperatures and lots of melting ice with great areas of open sea.Is it something to do with latent heat as with all this melting the air above supplies the energy and is chilled and then finds its way to us? Also our local forecast on Netweather has a temperature of 4c here for next Wednesday morning at 4.00am. I suppose this is not to unusual for the time of year.

The weather is cool but snow on the 4000ft mountains in late July and early August is exceptionally rare and historically this period of the summer has the least occurences of such events so i cannot see this being accurate. Cairngorm summit had a temp of 1.2oC earlier today so it's just about possible!!Low pressure looks to dominate our weather for quite some time. Showers, showers and more showers........

Just typical summer fare during the school holidays.

4oC is certainly unusual for this time of year. A grass frost is not what you would expect in late July.

Tonight is forecast to be unusually chilly in Braemar for example.

[Competition To Find Longest Consecutive Dry Spell]

I live in Fort William and i had no recordable rainfall until the 10 th of June. May was also very dry. See my recent post in the regional thread for more on our dry spell.

[Scotland Regional Discussion - Autumn]

Fort William has,to be fair, a bit of a reputation for more than a hint of drizzle on any given day of the year.My 17.2inch recording from last December was excessive to say the least.........

Since May we have watched the jet stream shift south and we have consequently had a very dry spell since then. The Outer Hebrides and the NW of Scotland are also in the way below average rainfall category. Laggan dam is now at its lowest level since 2003. Some fronts have skirted our area but we have virtually missed all the heavy down pours seen over much of Scotland recently. It has been cool and cloudy of late but with the Greenland high continuing to extend its influence to the west of Scotland i cannot see much rain in the near future for Lochaber. Not a great summer all round thus far!

[Snow and remaining snow patches]

I finally managed to get to the snow patch site at Aonach Beag this morning in very blustery conditions.After a lot of digging and prodding of todays fresh spindrift i can confirn that this patch has failed to survive.It had been there since 2006 but the remarkably mild and snowless November has broken this run.

I have never been out so late in the year checking these sites and with the gondola shut for annual maintenance i had a long day getting in/out of this site. Thankfully that's it for another year.

[Snow and remaining snow patches]

http://www.flickr.com/

The previous link didn't work-take two!

[Snow and remaining snow patches]

Thanks for the report Coaster.

A possibility then of just two survivals this year assuming no real high temps to come. Ob Gully in the West and the Sphinx in the Cairngorms.

Possibly Norrance but Aonach Beag is icy hard and cannot be dismissed yet.Looking back, that fall of snow in Oct has been pivotal this year.The Sphinx was looking woeful and the Ob gully snow always suffers from basal erosion as it sits on rocks.

Aonach Beag will require a visit.

[Snow and remaining snow patches]

I managed to get up the Ben today in fine and cool conditions with the cloud bases slowly rising as the day went on.

Unsurprisingly Point 5 didn't offer up much in the way of hope.2 patches remain but they are very small.The largest is 2.5m by 1.5m and shallow.The other is hrs away from disappearing.Lots of melting at the sites.3 patches of Octobers snowfall lie at the foot of Point 5 where the stream flows down.

Much better news at Ob gully. There are only 2 patches left and the one that missed out on the drifting snow from last month has been decimated.It is shallow with rocks poking through and some 3m across.Survival looks very unlikely.By contrast the other patch is still largely protected by the fresh snow from mid Oct with large drifts surrounding the edges and crucially underneath.This patch is 10.2m long by 3m wide and was solid with no melting today.After all the mild weather and rain of late i am surprised at the amount of snow remaining at this site.Dare i say it but If the weather stays cool could we have already had the lasting snows?......... All pics are on my Flickr acc- coaster 1

[Snow and remaining snow patches]

There are probably 3 patches on Nevis now. Point 5 gully patch has split in two (4 including split) and cannot be expected to last much longer. The 2 larger patches at Ob gully have had mixed fortunes. The largest is likely to still have fresh snow at it's base. The other is exposed and will be melting from below as well the surface. I will be up for a visit early next week.HP forecast which will cool things down.

[Snow and remaining snow patches]

A bit more worried today with the high temps in the hills [including overnight] and the current forecast. That big high over Europe does not want to move so pretty much Southerlies and South Westerlies for at least the rest of this week with very high temps again around Thursday / Friday.

Agreed,the stubborn Euro high is a big problem just now. No real cold on the models just brief transient cooling before the next wet and windy blast from the S/SW. 7-8oC at 4000ft is as bad as it gets for late Oct. The last of the recent fresh snow that is partially covering one patch on Nevis and a bit of the patch at Aonach Beag will be gone soon and then these patches will be very vulnerable.

The patch at AB is very icy and has been there since 2006 but the Nevis patches are less so and virtually all the remaining snow there is one year old.There will be visits to both sites this week. The one consolation is the deep cover over the Sphinx patch ensuring that at least one patch will survive!

[Record Cold Christmas On The Cards?]

All the attention seems to be on the impending breakdown early next week - which is certainly not nailed yet.. and there will be many more twists and turns in the coming days..

What people should be turning there attention to now is the prospect of some very cold conditions on christmas eve and day as we see heights develop slap bang over the country across a very dense cold pool. Intense radiative cooling will take place with no winds, freezing fog is likely to develop in some spots and I am anticipating -20 degrees below temps in some places, with maxima for many in the north below -5 degrees on the big day itself.

I'd be interested to know what the coldest christmas days have been. Last year, many northern parts had a ice day, but the thaw slowly set in from the south west for many..

I think 1995 was the last truely cold christmas day with sub zero maxima for many.

Mr Data do you have the stats, and what are people's thoughts about the potential very cold minima overnight on the 24/25th and possibly 25th/26th.

"Record cold" What are the the various meteorological conditions/factors at play for the U.K. to approach the record low temp of -27.2oC?

Snow cover,deep prolonged cold airmass over the U.K.,very short days,a prolonged lowering of daytime maxima followed by nighttime minima and finally H.P. over the U.K. for maximum irradiation.

In the first cold spell at the start of the month Altnaharra recorded -22.1oC. Still -5.2oC short of surpassing the twice recorded U.K. record............

......

We are now,according to the latest models,approaching the end of this memorable cold spell and could have a couple of days left to challenge the record minima,for 2010!

In my analysis,both of my home town records from Fort William and the hourly records of Altnaharra at the Met Office latest hourly observations website i have observed an obvious trend in that whenever fog/mist/cloud cover arrives the temp at best stalls if not rise a touch.For example, today we have a 2 p.m. temp at Altnaharra of -17.5oC in zero wind speed but 5hrs later it has only dropped to -19.8oC ,again in zero wind speed with a cloudy symbol on the website.So, if things turned clear overhead from 7p.m. tonight in Alnaharra it would not be too unrealistic to expect a .7oC av hourly lowering drop in temp by 8.a.m. to record a new record of -28.9oC.

Things are never that simple,in the last 30 years we have been close to the Scottish( -27.2)and English(-26.7) records for absolute minima in the U.K. so what are the widely held views on how and less importantly where we could break the record low minima in the U.K. in the medium term?

[Snow Patches Surviving on Scottish Mountains]

Still sizable patches on Aonach Mor this morning.