April Weather Roundup

The memory of April will be of exceptionally fine weather, with many days when we had warm sunshine and superb views - this one looks down the valley of the Achateny Water towards Braehouse Cottage, with the isles of Eigg and Rum in the distance. But it would be truer to describe the month as one of extremes.

Not only did we have snow on the hills - there's still some on the distant hills of Lochaber as we move in to May - but on the 2nd of the month we had snow on the ground in Ormsaigbeg. We also saw frosts, with a particularly sharp air frost on the night of 3rd/4th, and some ground frosts in the more sheltered parts of Kilchoan only four days ago.

We also had our fair share of other varieties of precipitation, including this shower, which could have been hail or snow, which moved across Ben Hiant on the 27th.

Perhaps one of the memorable features of the month were the rainbows, this one lying across Craigard Croft, with the hill called Glash Bheinn - the grey hill - in the distance.

As a result of the fine weather, the total precipitation for the month was a mere 77mm - but 25 of that fell in one 12-hour period, on the night of the 16th/17th.

Our biggest worry is that all this fine weather in April will be followed by the same run of rather dismal weather we had last year. The chances of this sunshine continuing are low but, if it does, we may well be joining other areas of the country is complaining about a drought.