Wet and Mild.
21st February 2025
The Met Office rainfall radar for Scotland today around midday with the location of Aonach Mor marked. It was a wet day even by Lochaber standards. Unfortunately it was also very mild with a midday summit temperature of around +4C.
The Aonach Mor midday temperatures so far this season as the daily rainfall totals from Glen Nevis. The rainfall data is the total up to 9am, so today’s total of around 25mm won’t include all the rain that fell after 9am, which is quite a lot!
It was very mild, very wet and very windy in Lochaber today. While trapsing about in the wetness, I was thinking about the two types of weather we have seen this season, either warm and wet, or cold and dry, and the contrast between them. Was this impression realistic summary of what we have seen?
The graph above shows both midday summit temperature and daily (the 24 hours up to 9 am) rainfall totals for Glen Nevis. The rainfall data was downloaded from the SEPA website where it is publicly available. The first few weeks of the season proper (from mid December) was mild and wet. There was about 370mm of rain in 15 days, with the two wettest (by quite some margin) days of the past twelve month occurring during this period. It was also generally mild with only about three days during this period when the summit temperature was below freezing. The precipitation that did fall as snow between about the 19th and 23rd, and mostly melted over the next few days.
Around New Year the temperature dropped, but the precipitation also stopped, and it was cold and dry for the next 12 days or so. There was a superficial dusting of snow, but that soon went when it turned mild just before the middle of the month. However, the mild period was at least dry, thinking back it felt like summer. The next major event was storm Eowyn and the low pressures of the following few days, which did put down a fair amount of snow. It felt like like proper winter for a few days. However, mild and progressively wetter conditions returned culminating in a very wet day on the 3rd of Feb stripped things back. After that it was a return to two weeks or so of cool and dry conditions with just a during of fresh snow on the hills around Lochaber. A couple of days ago the switch changed again, and the wet mild weather returned.
So this season it has tended to be either mild and wet, or cold and dry. There were two exceptions to this, the first being around Mid January when it was mild and dry (and felt like summer), and the storm Eowyn period when we actually got some significant snowfall. Looks like a brief return to cool and dry(ish) conditions tomorrow before mild and wet again on Sunday. However, in terms of actually getting some snow, there is some hope next week with the longer term forecasts suggesting a some snow build up at higher levels through the week.
Heavy rain overnight meant there was plenty of water about.
The burn running down from Aonach Mor.
Looking up the Goose Gully.
Where the water oozes out the ground has caused even more rapid melting of the snowpack.
Looking over towards Carn Mor Dearg. According to the Holfy stations it gusting 70pmh this morning at both the top of the gondola line (T17) and the CIC hut, both of which are at an altitude of about 650m. The met office weather station on the summit run seems to have broken. This photo was taken at my high point of about 900m, I am not sure quite how windy it was, but it was clearly too windy for me to hold the camera still.
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Colin
21st February 2025 6:01 pm
Fair play to you for getting out in today’s conditions. I agree re your weather synopsis, either warm n wet or dry n cold! No great opportunity for any ‘base’ to build up. We encountered storm Bert in Torridon. A huge dump of snow and calm followed the very next day by storm force winds and snow loss! Still time yet!!!