Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info

After a frosty night in the glens as layer of mist covers Loch Eil.

It had been quite cold overnight with a fair bit of ice in many of the puddles and streams on the walk up to the CIC hut.

The view from just below the CIC hut.

Looking up Carn Dearg buttress. Notice the spindrift catching the light coming off the top of the buttress, an indicator of strong winds up there.

At time the wind was quite strong, I would say I saw gusts of 60mph walking up from the CIC hut up to Coire na Cistse. There was blowing snow associated with this, as can be seen here coming off trident buttress. However, it felt like most of this blowing snow was dissipating back into the atmosphere, and I certainly didn’t see any significant deposits of fresh windblown snow. Interestingly when I walked down again an hour of so later, winds were light and variable.

The windspeed at the CIC hut for 6 hours up to just before 3pm today. I was walking up to Coire na Ciste about 10.30 where is was gusting 40mph at the hut, when I came came down about midday the wind had dropped right off. Just before 1pm it appears the wind turned back on again. There wind on Tower 17 of the gondola line over on Aonach Mor also showed period of much lighter winds around the same time. Is anyone able to explain this?

The temperature at the CIC hut for the 6 hours up to about 3pm today. It was above freezing for all this time other than from just before midday to around 1pm, the very period that the wind died as shown in the previous graph. I suspect the reason for this is that when the wind died, the air stopped mixing, and the layer within a few tens of meters of the ground was cooled by the cold ground. Also notice how low the wet bulb temperatures are (the lower row of dots), that explains why below the hut then the air temperature was actually above freezing, there was no melting of any snow and ice at that level.

Looking up toward Number Three Gully. Not much snow for the time of year!