UKC

Mountain weather forecasts convey a lot of information, but it's only of value if you know what to make of it all. In part 2, Will examines the key bits of info you should focus on.

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In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:

Perhaps its covered later but the section on rain could do with mentioning the effect on the many burns & streams that you will encounter on the hills, especially given the shortened day light hours and potential consequence of either a long detour or wet feet, especially if incurred early in your outing. Winters are warmer now and days of heavy rain are probably as, or more, likely than snow, sadly.

My last hill outing involved a quick dash over a ford that was deeper than usual given several previous days rainfall. I had already spent time exploring up and down steam for a possible dry crossing. It wasn't so important as this was towards the end of my walk, at the base of the hill and gave me access to a farm road running back eventually to my car (several miles away). In my planning and looking at alternative hills, I had decided that the hill I had originally planned to go to would be at high risk of burns in spate blocking access / exit

In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:

It would also be worth mentioning that today's forecasts are rarely wrong other than in minor details but what can vary is the timing. A warm or cold front can come through faster than predicted (or more slowly), which makes people think that the forecast is wrong, when it isn't.

In reply to phizz4:

The article mentions "confidence" in weather forecasts but doesn't suggest monitoring the predictions. I've done this for the last 10 yrs or so for MWIS, met office and the Norwegian forecast. Each day I write down the predicted temperature at 900m for these 3 forecast for the next 3 days. I then check the actual temperature using the real-time weather station info from Cairngorm, Aonach Mor and Bealach na Ba. From this slightly obsessive process you get confidence, or otherwise, in the predictions before you commit to the 8 hr drive. BTW the Norwegian forecast is most accurate for temperature IMHO.

In reply to Jeff Ingman:

8hrs for you!

In reply to phizz4:

I live in Ballachulish and would say that the weather forecast can get things exceptionally wrong at times. There are a couple of reasons for this

1) Slight shift north or south of a westerly weather system. If you've got a river of rain approaching south of your position, you could have a nice sunshine and occasional shower forecast. If the weather shifts northward, you could end up with a complete deluge. 

2) We've had many days where the weather forecast said no rain at all and even the radar said there was no rain at our location and yet we were getting soaked. This is generally very localised as the people in the next valley had sunshine.

It's best to take a look at the weather map within a 50miles of your planned location as whatever the forecast there is, could end up over you (obviously some conditions are topographical so take that into account.

In reply to UKC/UKH Articles: Good ionformation :_-) Good to see the difference in wind speeds between 'baseline' and gusts pointed out - yr.no uses background, gusts can be much stronger, and the yr weather prediction constantly surprising people used to seeing gust strength, e.g. that on the BBC