UKC

I'm looking for any info on the general conditions to be expected in the Gorms in winter. Martin Moran's Scottish Winter Mountains helps, and I'm trying to work out how to interpret the Cairngorm weather station information. I must be missing something on the site since this is what I'm finding: http://cairngormweather.eps.hw.ac.uk/2004/data2004.txt Hmm?!

I'm looking stats, stories, etc on conditions on the plateau in winter relevant to spending about five days linking up the tops.

How often do high pressures come along in January or February, and how long do they typically last? Any other info relating to winter will be fantastic. The Cairngorm summit station info would be great if I could work out how to access it??

Thanks

In reply to kwoods:

Sometimes and some amount of time.

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/north-atlantic-...

We have just came out of a Negative NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) into a positive one. Forecast looks to be positive for the next week or so and then changing phase again.

Read a little about the NAO here - http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/1vs.html

In reply to kwoods:

The Cairngorm AWS data has been very patchy in recent years: it doesn't get fixed very quickly when it breaks down. The text file format is explained here http://cairngormweather.eps.hw.ac.uk/archive.htm but you would need to process it yourself (not too hard with some basic spreadsheet skills) but there are no pressure readings, so probably of limited use to you anyway.

The Met Office daily analysis charts are archived here, going back to 1998: http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/tkfaxbraar.htm if you can be bothered trawling through them!

My guess is that >5 day spells of high pressure happen on average maybe a couple of times per winter.

In reply to kwoods:

Kevin, have you looked here? http://cairngormweather.eps.hw.ac.uk/archive.htm

The archive goes back to 1990 and it explains the file formats they use.

You could also drop alan at winterhighland a note, he takes a keen interest in the cairngorm weather.

In reply to Mark Bull:

There is an archive of pressure readings for Aviemore available here: http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/UnitedKingdom/Aviemore.htm
(click on "History", the choose "Pressure" and the date range you are interested in).