A change in the weather.
20th February 2026
Today, marked the end of an unusually cool and dry period of weather. The summit midday temperature was above freezing for the 2nd time in 2026, and rain was recorded at 900 metres for the 3rd day since New Year. A bit more on that further in this post. With more mild and wet weather expected for the next few days, it feels like a real change in the weather has occurred.
There had been a fair amount of overnight snow above about 800 metres. Through the morning the freezing level rose to just above the summits, and precipitation turned to rain or wet snow. Visibility was very poor on the tops, so no panoramic views into the Coire an Lochan to see what was going on in there. I could just make out some fresh cornices which would have been prone to collapse in the milder conditions. After a slightly drier night, a mild and wet day is expected tomorrow with plenty of potential for cornice collapse.
Looking up the Goose ski run. Still a good covering of snow.
Some good examples of raised footprints.
Very poor visibility on the tops.
The Aonach Mor midday temperature this season. It has generally been below freezing, with only one day (12th January) since late December when it has been above freezing, and that was only by about one degree. There have been a couple of times such as the 20th of January and the 8th and 9th of February when the temperature was around zero. It probably did get slightly above freezing at some point on those days, but not substantially so.
The longest number of consecutive days when the summit temperature was at freezing or below. With a midday temperature of +0.5°C today the recent long run of days (39 days) when the summit temperatures was at or below freezing which started on the 13th of January finally came to an end. This is just short of the longest period in the dataset which is the 40 days from the 3rd of March to the 11th of April 2013. A stretch of 37 days has been recorded twice. The first time was the 28th of January to the 5th of March 2010, and the second time between the 10th of January to the 15th of February 2013.
The number of days that rain has been recorded at 900 metres during January and February in Lochaber each year since 2008. Rain has only been recorded two days at 900m since the 1st of January. This was on the 11th and 12th of January and today. There is obviously just over a week left in February, but even if rain was recorded on each of those days, it would still have been less rainy than the same period for a good number of previous seasons. The lack of rain has been for two reasons. Firstly, the temperature has generally been cold enough for any precipitation to fall as snow at 900 metres. The other reason is the lack of precipitation. As measured by the SEPA rain gauge in Glen Nevis, January was below average rain fall, and February so far has been very dry with just 35mm or rain being recorded. That is about 14% of the February average of 248mm.
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Colin
20th February 2026 5:23 pm
Interesting data. Thanks for posting.
Mark Figiel
20th February 2026 6:01 pm
Great information above , even the great snowy winter of 2015 had 10 days of rain.
lochaberadmin
20th February 2026 8:42 pm
Yeah you forget that even the best winters had some poor days, but on the flip side even the worst winters had some good days. Glad you enjoyed the graphs.