Weather

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UK mountain weather

• Mountain Weather Information Service provides forecasts (in PDF format) for the mountain areas of the UK.
• Metcheck has forecasts for all the main UK mountaineering areas, and even more specific forecasts for a comprehensive list of climbing crags.
• The UK Met. Office issues forecasts specifically for mountain areas.
• AccuWeather also provides British mountain weather forecasts.
• Chris Crocker lists weather forecasts for Britain's mountains.
• Cairn Gorm Weather station - data and photographs from the automatic weather station on the summit of Cairn Gorm, with a selection of additional links.

UK snow conditions

• The Scottish Avalanche Information Service provide a short-range forecast and links to blogs describing conditions.
• Winterhighland weather is also useful for planning visits to the Highlands, having forecasts and an extensive list of webcam links for mountains and Highland roads.
• snow-forecast.com has good maps of most resorts in the world; they have a general forecast for Britain, and more detailed ones for various ski resorts (including some rather surprising ones - who knew there was a ski resort at Pen-Y-Fan in the Brecon Beacons?)

General UK and worldwide weather

• The BBC weather site is a good starting point for general UK weather forecasts.
• Metcheck does both British and European locations.
• The UK Met. Office has the latest visible spectrum satellite pictures and infra-red satellite pictures of Europe. The shipping forecast gives a good idea of what's going on. They also provide premium-rate phone-based services.
• European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) - contour plots from the ECMWF forecast model. This model runs to 6 days into the future and provides data at 24 hour intervals for sea level pressure, 850mb winds and temperatures and 500mb heights. The plots are generated at 01:45 AM (GMT) daily.
• Yahoo's weather centre gives a summary outline of the next 5 days - for just about anywhere, worldwide.

Satellite images

• The Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois has background information on satellites and remote imaging, including interpretation of images.
• The Satellite Receiving Station at Dundee University has pictures from NOAA satellites.

Forecasts on Radio and Television

• BBC weather broadcast schedules for radio and television forecasts.
• BBC Radio 4 (198 kHz long wave, 92.5-95 MHz FM) has the fabled Shipping Forecast at 00:48, 05:35, 12:50 and 17:50 daily (NB times in GMT - subtract one hour from local time during BST).
• BBC Radio Cumbria has a forecast for the Lake District (from Newcastle Weather Centre) at 6:35 and 7:35 each morning.
• BBC Radio Wales (882 and 657 kHz medium wave; spotty FM coverage!) has a hillwalkers' forecast at 19:02 on weekdays and 06:59 on weekends.
• BBC Radio Scotland (810 kHz medium wave, or 92-95 MHz FM) has a forecast for climbers and hillwalkers; weekdays 18:57 - 19:00; Saturdays 07:02 - 07:05 and 18:25 - 18:30.

Telephone forecast for the Lake District

• You'll have to get off your backside to use this one (but you can use it from more places than the Web-based ones): the Lake District fells weather forecast is on (01768) 775757. It's updated twice per day (at 08:00 and 17:30) and usually includes a warden's report from Helvellyn. To my knowledge this is the only specialist mountain weather forecast service left which is not on a premium-rate number, so use it while it lasts!

General weather indexes

• Ant Veal has a well-organised UK Weather Centre.
• Roger Brugge's links: links to European weather sites
• UK Weather Directory - quick links to a selection of good UK weather resources.