Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info

Misty murky conditions on the way up the hill. There were blobs of cloud floating about at different levels, and visibility  would change rapidly depending on where the blobs were.  Compare this photo to the one below which was taken 5 minutes later.

Looking up the Goose about 5 minutes after the previous photo was taken. This was about as clear as it got all morning.

The view down Easy Gully which is full of soft, damp snow.

The view across the plateau from near the top of Easy Gully. There is not much snow left on the plateau.

The top of Right Twin. A few small cornices remain, and these are slumping in the mild conditions.

There is a bit of cornice slumping going on. However, I suspect thing will general settled and stabilise with just small sections here and there falling off rather than any large and substantial failure.

A table of the average January, February and March Aonach Mor summit midday temperature for each year going back to 2008. They are ranked from coldest to warmest. This year’s values are highlighted yellow. As can be seen both January and February were close to the mean, while this year March was the second mildest in the dataset. Combined these three months were slightly milder this year than the 2008 to 2025 average.

The January Aonach Mor summit midday temperature anomaly going back to 2008. All the years the anomaly is less than two degrees. There seems to be less variation in the January temperature than for February or March.

The same as above but for February. There is more variation in February than January with four or five years with an anomaly of greater than plus or minus two degrees.

As above but for March. Large variations in temperature in March, particularly around the 2012/2013 period. This year March was just over a degree above the March average, similar to 2016 and 2017 which from memory were overall similar to this winter with long dry periods and not a great deal of snow.

As above but for the the period of January, February and March inclusive. In both 2016 and 2020 the anomaly is so close to zero, that the bar associated with those years does not appear in the graph. The past 4 years have been the most consistent temperature wise with a small positive anomaly.

Snow fall amounts for the period January to March inclusive. The 24 hour snow fall amount is recorded on the snowpit data. It is done in a particular way for historical reasons and there are some weaknesses with this method. However, it is still useful to to compare roughly how much snow falls during one year as compared to another. The units of the left are non-dimensional, and they don’t really correspond to any physical measurement, and should be more viewed as a proxy for how much snow fell out the sky independent of whether it melted the next day or stuck around for a month. This figure shows the cumulative January to March snow fall. The snowy winter of 2014 stands out. This year January to March one of the least snowy beaten only by 2012. However, due to the timing of the snowfalls, and the thaws, this year there has ended up being less snow on the ground than even 2012 I would say.