Improved Met Office Mountain Forecast
This week the Met Office has made major changes to its mountain weather forecasts, including its forecast for the Lake District, so that they now provide considerably more information.
As well as any warnings and a summary as before they are now providing a detailed break down every three hours through the day including wind speed, direction, and gust along with temperature and "feels like" temperative at four different heights: "valley", 300m, 600m, and 900m.
In addition, like the Mountain Weather Information Service forecasts, they include the percentage chance of cloud-free summits at 800m which is good news if you're looking for a view.
We note they also have a section headed "Ground conditions" and although there's nothing of interest there yet we suspect that might be where they're going to report on things like depth of snow and avalanche risk in the winter.
Finally the forecast is also available as in Adobe PDF format for printing.
Richard Orrell of the Met Office, commented to the BBC:
Mountain weather can change very quickly. Good weather can rapidly turn severe when altitude is added to the mix, so being prepared is essential.Our new and improved Mountain Forecast is compiled by specially-trained meteorologists who often spend time in the hills and mountains and know the ins and outs of mountain weather.
If you are walking elsewhere in the country then it's also worth mentioning that they have now divided Scotland's mountains into five areas - Northwest Highlands, Southwest Highlands, North Grampians, South Grampians and Southeast Highlands, rather than the two (East Highlands and West Highlands) which were provided before.
Below you can see all the new forecast areas laid out of a map.
All the mountain forecast areas
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