Colder
10th March 2025
There was a significant change in how it felt today, but little change in how the mountains looked. The freezing level dropped to around 700 metres and it felt bitterly cold on the summit plateau with the windchill making it feel like minus 12 degrees Celsius. The remaining snow patches had become firm.
There was hope that the mountains might look a bit more wintry today with up to 2cm of new snow forecast, but what arrived was the lower end of the what was forecast as indicated by the SEPA rain gauge at the Spey Dam showing 0.2mm of rain. The photos below give a good overview of what did, or didn’t, arrive in terms of fresh snow.
Coire Ardair with no sign of fresh snow.
A close up of Pinnacle Buttress with Raeburn’s Gully on the left and Easy Gully on the right.
The Inner Coire with the strip of remaining dirty snow on the right coming out of ‘Cinderella’. Some small cornices above have survived the thaw.
Looking down towards ‘The Window’. All remaining snow patches are now firm. The extent of fresh snow that has arrived in the last 24 hours can be seen in the foreground … if you look closely.
Rime starting to form on these blades of grass at 980 metres. The blades of the rime are pointing into the cold North-East wind.
Over the back. The North facing slopes on the back of Creag Meagaidh above Lochan Uaine.
For those interested in yesterday’s graph, here are the recorded summit temperatures on Creag Meagaidh for the 10th March over the last 12 years.
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Keith Horner
10th March 2025 5:57 pm
As you predicted yesterday, and to quote your Northern Cairngorms colleague and Dinah Washington ‘What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours’….. Todays temperatures are more like what would normally be expected during early March but we seem to be experiencing very rapid temperature fluctuations which combined with this particularly snowless winter has definitely limited winter climbing potential.