Weather Watching

In the wake of Storm Callum last weekend we thought this was a good time to talk about how our web site can help you assess the weather conditions if you're visiting the Lakes.

Webcams

There are a lot of webcams scattered around the Lake District and we try to keep track of them all on our Lake District Webcams page (you can find this under the "Safety" tab on our web site) and looking at these webcams is a great way of assessing the weather now, especially as some of them are live video. Here for example is a screen grab of Keswick Computer Solutions Blencathra Webcam yesterday morning when it was a lovely sunny day:

By the way when you're using any of the webcams we link to do always check that the date/time on the camera image is right - they do "stick" occasionally, something we pick up on and report when we're doing our regular audit.

Forecasts

On our Lake District Weather Forecasts page (again you can find this under the "Safety" tab on our web site) we link to all our favourite weather forecasting sites including:

• The Met Office who provide a detailed Lake District Forecast for walkers.

• Weatherline who offer a five day forecast for the Lake District produced by the Met Office plus, from December to March, their fell top assessors walk up Helvellyn to check conditions, take photos and supply a report to add to the Met Office weather forecast that appears 365 days a year.

• MWIS, the Mountain Weather Information Service, provide a three day forecast for the Lake District (and other mountain regions too) aimed specifically at the mountain walker.

That page also has sunrise and sunset times and links to various sites who offer current observations of weather conditions.

Gauging Stations

The Environment Agency, and their colleagues in Wales and Scotland, have a vast network of gauging stations on waterways and bodies of water across Great Britain which measure water levels and we provide an easy way to access that via our GPX mapping application.

If you go into that, no need to register or log in first, click on the menu button, then select "Layers" and check the "Water levels" checkbox then blue markers will appear across the map showing the location of all the gauging stations. Here's the ones around Keswick:

The third from the left is the one on in Keswick where the A591 crosses the River Greta at Greta Bridge, a site notorious for flooding in the past. If we click on that marker a popup appears thus:

and you can immediately see what the water level is now and what the likelihood of flooding is near that location. If you want to see more, including historical information, then click on the link and you will be taken to the Environment Agency's page which looks like this:

This snapshot was taken just after Storm Callum and you can see that for a short time it all got a bit hairy but things then calmed down quite fast.

So looking at gauging stations lets you assess the state of water levels - especially important if you planned walk takes you close to or indeed involves fording water.

Tagged: maps, safety, walks

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