OUT AND ABOUT WITH RALPH: Making the most of weather windows – when it works
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The quality of weather forecasts has improved incredibly over recent years and detailed predictions of wind, rain and cloud over the next 24 hours are rarely wrong.
So you can watch and wait in unsettled weather and choose a predicted ‘window’. Rainfall radar is also very useful, you can look in real time and see if the forecast clearance is actually coming.
We look after the garden at Freswick Castle and were hoping for a dry interlude to cut the grass and tend the borders. The morning started grey and wet with little wind, you’d have given up on the day but the charts showed it should clear by late morning and then be sunny till heavy showers built in late afternoon.
The rainfall radar indicated Durness was now dry, and soon showed the clearance reaching Bettyhill. Looking westward from home it indeed showed signs of brightening. We set off and reached Freswick as the last spots of rain cleared.
The sun came out, the grass dried, but big cumulus were building all around, some topped by the fibrous white sheets of ice-crystals which often signify a downpour. The forecast was for a heavy shower just to the south around four o’clock. I was skeptical of such accuracy but sure enough, as we were leaving, the sky to the south was black and a few big drops of rain were falling on this northern edge of the shower.
A few days later, and I was looking for a break in the steady winds for a sea-kayak trip. There was just one morning’s gap forecast between the west wind dying down and the east wind picking up. I’d paddle west from Sandside towards Melvich and make use of the turning tide to take me back.
Indeed the wind had subsided and the morning was fine and clear with almost autumnal light sharp on the heather-tinted moors of Drumholistan. But the swell was, as correctly forecast, slight to moderate, which means up to two or three metres.
I’d rather hoped that part of the forecast might be wrong – I don’t trust this coast in a swell, there are lots of reefs and rocks where waves can suddenly rear up and break unexpectedly.
Once out of the harbour I paddled slowly round Sandside Head, keeping well out. Waves could be seen breaking well up the cliffs further along, I couldn’t even easily get into Fresgeo, just west of the head, where I usually stop and take stock before proceeding further, I’d never manage to land at Puffin Cove as planned. I turned back. I’d walk down to that deep stony bay from the road instead.
The puffins were still there, sitting outside their burrows on the stack and flying to and fro. What has completely changed in the last two years is that there is now a wide, blazed path all the way down to the sea from the road. Lots of cars were parked, I saw about 30 people. The route is quite wet and rough, and some tourists were finding it hard! This previously unknown spot has somehow gone viral via the North Coast 500.
I looked to a third weather window for another visit to Ben Griam Beg, a hill I hadn’t climbed for years. Rain was pelting down in the strath but I was confident of the forecast clearance which seemed to be coming through as I set off down the the track to Greamachary.
The southerly wind dropped away. Midges rose. Cloud was lifting off the tops, Ben Armine was clearing, Morven’s triangle rose sharp to the south. Looking forward to good views I passed the isolated holiday house and followed a quad-bike track up towards the skyline
Now a west wind was picking up and the skies turning grey again, as I made my way slowly up rough slopes a burst of heavy rain had me wet before I could get my waterproofs on. Suddenly the cloud was down again. The summit was cold, wet and misty and I needed my compass. Weather conditions must have been very different 2000 years ago when a huge area here was walled in around a hill fort on the summit.
By the time I was back on the shores of Loch an Ruathair the true clearance had arrived and the sun was out, the best part of the day was spent pottering along the sandy shores of the loch and walking slowly back along the track to the car. In a weather window.
