After a turbulent week of weather, two of Scotland's five ski areas are opening very limited terrain today or tomorrow.
Cairngorm ski area has opened a few beginner runs at the top of the mountain for the first time in over a month and Glencoe on the West Coast plans to open limited terrain tomorrow.
A week ago there was very little snow cover in Scotland after a month of mostly warm, dry weather ten storm Barbara arrived heralding the starts of five days of non stop gales with gusts exceeding 100mph on mountain slopes. There was heavy snowfall too but the wind tended to disperse the snow. However Scottish ski areas have long experience of this issue and snow fencing helped to hold snow on the ski runs.
"The Access Chair and plateau Poma will run tomorrow. This will provide limited skiing for beginners and early intermediates on the Plateau run and Coire Pollach," said a statement from Glencoe ski area.
The neighbouring ski area of Nevis Range also has limited skiing using its artificial surface slope near the gondola top station and Cairngorm (pictured above this morning) is also operating on limited terrain around its upper lift station and says it is strictly restricting lift ticket sales today. In fact it stopped selling tickets at 10am due to the very limited open terrain.
Temperatures have fluctuated wildly and randomly in the Highlands over the festive period, at one point rising a degree an hour from 3C in the valleys during the day to +12C at 2Aam before cooling again by the following morning. More large temperature fluctuations are forecast in the week ahead so continued opening of Scottish slopes over the busy New Year period may be problematic.