(Glenshee yesterday)
Although you might not know it if you're down in Aviemore or Fort William in the valleys, the snow on Scottish ski slopes above is nearly ten feet deep after five to six weeks of near constant snowfalls.
The warm and wet weather that has affected much of Britain has quite simply been dumping snow on Scottish mountain tops (Norwegian areas have done well from the same systems), and now at least one resort, Glencoe, reports the snow as deep as it was in the last 'mega winter' of 2009-10.
The BBC in Scotland has gleefully been noting that reported Scottish snow depths are head of many leading resorts in the world including the last Olympic venue Whistler, and the next one, Sochi. They didn't mention South Korea's 2018 venue.
Four of the five areas are in particularly good shape with almost all slopes open and top to bottom cover, only The Lecht in the east has not done so well and tended to get more of the British rain than the highland snow, although at the moment is also has several runs open.
"It can be hard for customers to believe we have good snow when there is rain and even snowdrops flowering in the Lowlands and by the coast," said Heather Negus of SkiScotland, "We therefore suggest skiers and boarders check out the webcams on the official website and look at the ski areas' Facebook pages where they'll see just how much snow we have and the excellent sliding we can offer."
This being Blighty, weather can be a tad changable and Ski-Scotland advises everyone to check snow, weather and road conditions before leaving to go skiing on their slopes on the official, mobile-and tablet-friendly website www.ski-scotland.com/conditions and to wrap up warmly – despite the forecast low wind speeds, wind chill could still be significant.
