Central Highlands - Deep cold then thaw
 

I escaped to the Central Highlands over Scottish week (near Laggan)
and entered the freezer. Between 22nd and 26th December the
temperature was consistently between -15 and -18C, and dropped to
circa -21C on several nights. Water pipes froze and the air felt far
more akin to Lapland or Central Sweden than Scotland.

Major rivers such as the Spey and the Dee were frozen solid bank-to-
bank and there were reports of several people driving cars across a
number of the lochs. Around Laggan itself there wasn't much snow (say,
6 to 8 inches) but more over in the East towards Aviemore and in the
West towards Fort William. Up on Cairngorm mountain there were
substantial drifts to 3 or 4 metres (probably more).

I was very surprised how easily the mild SW'ly winds changed all of
this from the 26th onwards. Around Laggan there was a very short
period of wet snow which quickly turned to rain (below circa 2000ft).
By 29th Dec most of the snow had gone (below 2000ft) however this
dramatic melt was quite localised, much less out East.

Heading home on the 30th Dec we drove back over the high roads further
East via Tomintoul and Glen Shee. There was considerable amounts of
snow still lying here and several of the roads were only just passible
(snow chains were at the ready).

Conditions at Glen Shee, Lecht and Cairngorm are very soft at present
but all of this is about to change again. So I would suggest that in
the Central Highlands the Winter so far has been more the BIG CHILL
than the BIG WHITE.

Here are a few pictures which try to illustrate the conditions -
http://picasaweb.google.com/Richard2...eat=directlink

Man in the Back Country