http://www.grough.co.uk/magazine/2016/09/11/forecast-gloomy-for-mountain-weather-information-service-as-funding-disappears
> Mr Monk, who has been a meteorologist all his life, said: “We don’t know the reasons sportscotland has withdrawn the funding.
> “All of a sudden, we knew from what was a very positive press release put out by the Met Office on 7 March saying we, sportscotland and the Met Office were going to work more closely together using the skills we have – presumably our skills in mountain weather forecasting – and suddenly we never heard any more.
> “All went quiet for a while. We’d been talking to the Met Office increasingly; we had a meeting in Manchester last October and a full day in Exeter in February which was a very positive day, and I think everybody concerned would have agreed with that, which was followed by that press release.
> “Then, I met with sportscotland on 22 April which was a funny meeting. Let’s just say sportscotland seemed to have gone a little bit cold. They seemed to be giving mixed signals.
> “I came back from Glasgow and then subsequently, when everything was quiet, I asked for another meeting. I went up to Glenmore Lodge, and met with them on 18 July and it was then that, after a little bit of beating about the bush, it was stated by sportscotland that they were collaborating with the Met Office; it’s too complicated to collaborate with three people.
> “It was really quite a shock. That was the bottom line. Following that meeting I wrote what I thought was a fairly detailed response, outlining where I felt we’d come from and just reviewing the conversation we’d had at Glenmore Lodge. I’d also been on the phone with the Met Office for an hour that afternoon. My final statement was an invitation to get back to negotiations.
> “I did make plain that, without my knowledge, the situation seemed to have changed.
> “The Met Office had described the planned collaboration in various terms. They described it as a roadmap; in other words, we were not quite sure where we were going to go: let’s collaborate on our skills and let’s see how we can work together.”
> He said he believed earlier in the year MWIS would be working with the Met Office to provide sportscotland with an improved service.
> “We started to have meetings. The culmination was: our skill was in weather forecasting; their contribution would be mainly adding on to the site which, incidentally one part of our proposal was to get the forecasts on to the other lodge sites, which made a lot of common sense, for sportscotland really to be a big part of MWIS. That was one of the big things really.
> “sportscotland was really looking to take ownership of MWIS in a positive way. They just moved away from that without any explanation; all the work I’d done with the Met Office, all of a sudden, sportscotland put nothing in writing.
> “The plan was that the MWIS forecasts would also appear on the Met Office sites; also appear on a Sportscotland website which would also include the Scottish Avalanche Information Service information. Together on that website would be some automated information supplied by the Met Office which would be things straight from a computer, like summit temperatures, wind speeds and such, which is not such high-quality information, but it’s good as an initial plan.”
> Mr Monk said finding alternative cash to run the service would not be easy. “It’s difficult to see where we could get alternative funding, though nothing is impossible.
> “I am aware a very small number have said, why not try crowdfunding or something like that. But you do that once. Is that really something that’s sustainable?”
Post edited at 19:30