Perceptions of winter 2013/2014 ...
In the high mountains, it's been exceptionally snowy and we might even end up looking back on it as being record breaking in due course. It'll be interesting to hear Adam Watson's view but the anecdotal observation from Hamish MacInnes about this winter's snow line demarcation is very telling ...
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www.bbc.co.uk]
"The first time I went climbing was in 1945 and I remember cutting our way through snow in Glencoe. I've not seen anything like it until now.
This covering of snow we have just now is very alpine. There is a very defined demarcation line between where the snow starts and the bare grass below."
But for the 99% of people who can't see ground above 2,000 feet, in England, Wales and much of lowland Scotland, it's just appeared to be an exceptionally wet one, record breakingly so in fact ...
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metofficenews.wordpress.com]
Simultaneously, the same folk have ended up believing that it's been an exceptionally warm winter too, mostly because there's been next to no snow in the towns and cities. In reality, it's been just a bit milder than average (the CET records show this was mostly on account of early December), but the constant night-time cloudiness has prevented the consistently quite cold upper air which has been responsible for our mountain snowfalls bringing any night time, clear air frosts that freeze puddles and ice windscreens.
Depressingly, the collective mood of the weather forums got so gloomily entrenched discussing how mild and wet our winter was that every topic deteriorated to become a more or less identical moan. Perversely enough, the group think at one forum actually became so hostile to reminders that this winter was alive and very well above 2,000 feet in Scotland, that after many years posting, I've given up with it.
So now that we're nearly at the end of winter 2013/2014 meteorologically speaking, and while we obviously still have another couple of months before Spring arrives in the mountains, it's obvious that it's already been one of the snowiest in living memory even without whatever the lambing storms may bring us in March and April.
And what's made it so unusual is that the jet stream's direction which has been pointing mostly through the centre of Britain since the middle of December has made hardly any deviation from its full on westerly mode. It has produced immense amounts of snow for the northern mountains without any need for 'blocking' high pressure systems to pull in northerlies or easterlies.
Contemporary climatalogical thinking also holds that while exceptions will crop up from time to time due to periods of high pressure blocking, increasingly snowy mountain winters in our latitudes cannot be reconciled with increasing global average temperatures.
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www.scotsman.com]
This thinking would have had you believe that because of its prevailing synoptics, winter 2013/2014 should never have become a good mountain snow exception candidate but should instead have been expected to be a run-of-the-mill candidate for a poor mountain snow winter in a warmer world. So while most sane people would agree that underlying warming continues on a global scale, in my mind there's more grounds than ever for a rethink on how our own mountain climate will be affected by it and that winter 2013/2014 should be very reassuring evidence for the future of Scottish skiing.