Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info

Looking back at the ski area from the side of  Sgurr Finnisgaig. As common for recent weeks the hill was in the cloud, but it was clear at lower levels.

There was plenty of snow blowing along the ground at about 650 metres. However, not much seemed to be sticking and it was mainly dissipating back into the atmosphere.

The view up the Goose. Not much change in snow amounts here over the past couple of weeks. The strong winds have blown down hill, and with all the lumps and bumps of the underlying ground now buried, there is not much in the way of features to catch the blowing snow. The fences in the photo catch the snow well when the wind is from the SW and thus perpendicular to the fences. The consistent SE winds of late have been parallel to this fence and thus it has not really caught much snow.  However, other fences on the hill which have been perpendicular to the SE wind have done a good job of catching the snow.

The view over toward Carn Dearg Beag. Even when not in the cloud the atmosphere felt very murky.

Snow fences at about 900 metres. Windy, with a fair bit of blowing snow but not much of it sticking anywhere.

The 24 hour average wind direction as measured by the met station on Aonach Mor for every day since the 1st of January. After a week of so of North-West winds at the start of January the wind has been consistently from the South. I think that the location of the station may under-read the Easterly component of the wind, and there has often been slightly more East in it than suggested by this graph. Although I have not compared to other years, it feels like the wind direction has been more consistent for the past month than usual.