WINTER 2006 - Uneventful, followed by a March blizzard:
24th Feb-3rd March - Bron-yr-Aur snow-stomp!


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With its own sense of irony, winter here (in terms of widespread snow) began on November 25th (officially still Autumn), then took a break until March 1st (officially Spring)! December had little of note about it while January and February featured a lot of chilly but dry anticyclonic gloom, punctuated by a visit to my sister in Essex at Christmas, when the journey home was commenced in 4-wheel drive due to heavy snow-showers working in off the North Sea. A lot of the time, with high pressure either over the UK or just to its north, cold Easterlies affected the southern UK, while just to our south, a lot of Europe faced plunges of bitterly cold air from the general direction of Russia. These dealt us the odd glancing blow but we missed the worst of it. In such setups, referred to quite appropriately as "blocked", there can be some highly tedious weather. Days of dry, chilly greyness without much sunshine soon start to get people down, especially when a raw Easterly is factored in. Wales rarely does well for snow under such setups.....
Photographs were generally very hard to find in January and through February. One day the skies cleared a little and I had a few tries with the "fossil forest" at Borth, but the results were largely disappointing. This one's just about acceptable....
Occasional half-hearted snowy incursions occurred up in the hills but the big feature of January and February has been the dryness. A lot of rain is required in some parts of the UK if supplies are to be topped-up sufficiently. A contrast then, from recent winters, with their successions of Atlantic low-pressure systems trundling through and dumping inches of rain and wet snow onto the Welsh mountains...
Signs of something more interesting began around February 24th when an area of low pressure took up temporary residence over N Europe, with a strong Easterly flow with accompanying fronts and troughs resulting. Snow fell over the Cambrian Mountains, taking several people by surprise with very dodgy driving conditions on the hill-roads (snow lying on ice). I've heard of one or two quite impressive epics being experienced, fortunately, so far as I know, without major injury: one involved a car going off the road and 40ft down a hillside! Easterlies then blew for a few days and once the snow had eased back a bit it was possible to get out into the hills. The shot above shows a choppy Llyn Syfydrin...
This part of upland Wales, remote and largely uninhabited, is sometimes referred to as the "green desert". Today in the afternoon sun the dried-out grasses made it more of an ochre colour. The Plynlimon group are in the background....
... while this is the W side of Plynlimon in that rather "flat" light that often accompanies Easterlies. They pick up a lot of particulate pollution from the Continent and for some reason this makes photography tricky. Give me a deep blue Polar Maritime airmass any day!!
In some places the tracks were coated in deep slush that was partially frozen making for some interesting driving conditions! But the transition to the clear air was not far off now. A low pressure system developed in the North Sea and as the high slipped back west, the first decent Northerly to affect Wales since November 25th set in. Accompanying it was, as ever, the famous North Channel Effect with streamers of cumulonimbus clouds moving southwards or at times southeastwards across Wales as the wind-field underwent subtle shifts....
February 28th saw my first storm-intercept of the year, which turned out to be fun, although these are the only two photos I liked (especially the last). The convection was largely messy-looking, but this approaching squall, seen from the sea-front at Tywyn, was a bit special.
As it made its "final approach" my car-radio started to make regular clicking noises, then a buzzing sound which turned gradually into a high-pitched and most alarming loud squealing noise. Having heard this a couple of times before, I was aware of what was coming. The hailstones swept down the front and the jeep rocked as the wind suddenly rose to severe gale-force. A 10-minute pounding followed, leaving hailstones piled up in drifts, before the skies cleared again and the squall moved on. In no time the anvil, with some mammatus clouds hanging beneath it, was disappearing towards the horizon. This was quite a sharp hailstorm for the synoptic conditions. In Aberdyfi, just down the road, quantities of hailstones 10-12mm in size were found lying among the smaller stuff - not severe as such but big enough to sting if caught out in it! The radio noise I have heard three times before. When out after storms it is common to tune your radio to an "empty" AM area, as this will clearly detect nearby lightning strikes. This works because a bolt of lightning will produce radio waves radiating outwards from it in all directions. Your radio aerial picks up these signals - known as "sferics" - and the sound you will hear over the speakers is a crackle, faint if a storm is many miles away but loud if a storm is close. On this occasion no lightning was seen or detected close by, but there was clearly some kind of radio signature generated by the countless hailstones colliding together. It must have been due to the hail, as the noise began as the hail approached and rose to a crescendo when the storm was overhead. Any ideas anyone?
The following day - March 1st - I was due to drive to Dorset leaving first thing. I had some doubts about this due to the plethora of snow warnings issued by the Met Office: the previous day had already seen the hills white over. I got up at about 0400 to check conditions on the internet, but was greeted with this! As I drank coffee and browsed the latest forecast data, the snow fell, and fell, and fell. Daylight arrived and with it that eerie silence that you get on a snowy morning, when normally everyone would be going to work. News started to filter in: main road out of the area blocked due to a jacknifed lorry, schools closed everywhere, all the usual stuff. So I thought better of risking the drive and with three unexpected clear days ahead I resolved to make the most of the situation and do a bit of walking with cameras in tow!
On the late afternoon of the 1st I walked up Y Wylfa, the hill just out of town. 15cm of powder-snow now covered everything and the local kids were having a great time sledging on the lower slopes. This Cb drifted along to the east of town, giving the odd rumble of thunder as it set about making the A470 treacherous near Dinas Mawddwy...
A snowy Machynlleth with more to come!
Telephoto into the flat flood-plain of the Dyfi...
The following day - the 2nd - I walked up into the hills on the N side of the valley in the late morning. Broken cloud and only occasional showers allowed the sun to get to work - it's quite strong by March - so that along the valley floor patches of grass started to show again, together with the first few celandine flowers in the hedgrows - a sure sign of Spring. Up here however it was still cold enough for most of the snow to remain. This is the track up towards Bron-yr-Aur.....
...and a shot of the famous old cottage, a venue of pilgrimage for many Led Zeppelin fans. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote a number of the now legendary songs while they lived here, back in the very early 1970s. Today it was silent, the only tracks in the snow made by sheep. It has a peaceful, yet lonely feel to it. I'm not sure I'd want to live there alone! Time was pressing on, and from this point I turned back downhill through the snow to town again to see if clearer conditions could be expected. A check of the satellite imagery said yes, in a few hours. This looked an ideal opportunity for late afternoon photography, so I thought I'd drive as far up the Machynlleth-Llanidloes mountain road as the snow permitted, then walk the rest of the way. I was to be pleasantly surprised....
...as the Council lads had cleared the whole pass! This was taken on the way up, looking northwards. It's a technical shot, that shows the power of the March sun. South-facing slopes have had all of the snow melted, while north-facing ones have most of it left!
The broken cloud still hung around so I parked at the top of the pass and continued with the snow-stomping towards Glaslyn. This proved to be hard-going. The snow had gathered in 2ft drifts widely which would take one's weight for 3 paces then give way plunging you up to your knees for the fourth. A mile from the jeep was enough. I tried a few shots, but the light was still wrong, as the above image shows. There's normally a drivable track alongside the fence! By the time I'd wandered back to the jeep time was pushing on, but more importantly the sky had cleared significantly.....
....giving fantastic conditions! This was just below the top of the pass looking SE....
.... while this is looking SSE, back at the hills I had been plodding about in, from lower down.
The following evening - Friday 3rd - I climbed back up Y Wylfa hoping for a glorious sunset. This is looking SSE towards the higher hills: the sun has again been busy, burning off a lot of the snow lower down...
Promising at first, but.....
The sunset never arrived as this large bank of cumulus drifted down from the north. As it blotted out the sunlight the temperature dropped sharply and, it being obvious that sunset was off the menu, I did not hang around long. Got this contrails/evening sky shot before I left though! The cold weather did not end there. On Saturday morning Machynlleth awoke to yet another fall of snow covering everything. This was the coldest and snowiest spell for some years, and it finally ended during the early morning of Tuesday 7th, when Atlantic fronts began pushing in from the west as the high-pressure block fell apart. Heavy rain set in and soon put pay to the remaining snow. It was great to spend a few unexpected days off, trudging about in the hills, mostly in the sunshine, with the unending greyness of the official Winter a fading memory. Spring's here!
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