CUHWC Hillwalking resources

Weather

Please note: the resources listed here are outside our control, so links will occasionally be inoperative, despite regular checks. Please help by reporting broken links to the webmaster. Any additions would also be greatly appreciated.

There are quite a few sources of weather information; UK Climbing has a good collection of weather links. Here is a selection of the most useful ones, including some that UK Climbing don't have:

Mountain weather
Mountain Weather Information Service provides forecasts (in PDF format) for the mountain areas of the UK.
Nevisport Live has forecasts for all UK mountain areas, including avalanche conditions and ski and surf conditions. Thanks to Rob Staples for spotting this one.
Online Weather also provides British mountain weather forecasts.
Chris Crocker lists weather forecasts for Britain's mountains.
Snow conditions
The Scottish Avalanche Information Service provide a short-range forecast. Winterhighland weather is also useful for planning visits to the Highlands.
snow-forecast.com has good maps of most resorts in the world; they have a general forecast for Britain, and more detailed ones for the ski resorts of Cairn Gorm, Aonach Mor, Glen Coe, Snowdon and Scafell Pike.
Euroseek weather
gives good maps of the North Atlantic areas, with separate maps for temperature, wind, precipitation and cloud cover.
Météo-France
Météo-France provides a next-day forecast picture (as you would see from space).
UK Met. Office
The 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 services and fax-back services for mountain areas.

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.
Metcheck
Regional forecasts and synoptic charts.
HIRLAM
Unfortunately, KNMI (the Dutch Weather Institute) no longer provide forecast maps from the HIRLAM model. Supposedly it should be back on the Web later (improved) but it might not be a free service. (Thanks to Martine Vandepoll for helping me with the Dutch explanation).
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.
Cairn Gorm Weather station
Data and photographs from the automatic weather station on the summit of Cairn Gorm, with a selection of additional links.
Descriptive forecasts
For a prepared report, like a newspaper forecast, use Ananova Weather. Yahoo's weather centre gives a summary outline of the next 5 days - for just about anywhere, worldwide.
Forecasts on Radio and Television
The BBC weather centre now have forecasts; they also show 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
Toby Speight <cuhwc-web@gmx.net>

Last modified: Monday, 18 June 2007, at 17:35 (BST)