Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info » The birth of the Internet and other interesting things. And some more rain……….

The birth of the Internet and other interesting things. And some more rain……….

21st December 2023

Who can remember the start of the Internet??

Well, 30 years ago today the Department of Computer Science at Glasgow University started to host avalanche reports from the SAIS. Some tech wizards set up a modem for the avalanche forecasters to send their daily reports into a Glasgow Uni server and the collated forecasts were made available to anyone on the internet. Thanks to Mark Sanderson, Naveed Khan and Ross Purves!! With upwards of 1 million page views last winter, this internet thing seems to have caught on!

The 1995 online version

Now back to today…

Last nights storm, Pia, brought gale force winds. It also brought rain and a freezing level that was well above the summits. By this morning, this rain had stripped what little snow we had on the Lochaber mountains away, so we are starting from scratch again.

There were colder temperatures during today, and a glimpse of a slight dusting of snow on the higher summit of Aonach Beag.

Over the next 24 hours there will be showers, generally of snow above around 800 metres. There will be a rise in freezing level tomorrow morning to around summit height, before dropping back down to 800 metres. Winds are expected to remain West-North-Westerly, very strong to gale force on the tops.

The accumulation of snow during this period is not expected to be significant, and will be falling on bare ground. There is not expected to be any avalanche hazard.