This week 12 BSc and MMet students from Reading, along with 5 staff and 36 students and staff from the University of Leeds are here in Lochranza on Arran for a weeklong residential field course. The students will be involved in various activities including a hill walk, radiosonde and ozonesonde launches, boundary layer sampling with a 15m mast and producing a nightly weather forecast.
We will also be holding a morning weather briefing and I will be posting any interesting observations we make, here on this live blog. At the moment conditions are dominated by very strong winds (around 12m/s from due south) meaning getting our equipment up and running is a bit challenging.
Current temperatures are around 17 degC with moderate humidity (dewpoint around 10 degC). There is broken stratiform cloud overhead.
Current synoptic conditions, show Arran positioned between the dissipating blocking anticyclone to the east and a complex a low pressure systems to the west south of Iceland. Pressure gradients between the two systems are large leading to the strong flow over the west of the UK.
Today (Monday) we will launch our first sonde and tomorrow (Tueday) we are due to walk up Goat Fell (850m to the summit) and take hand held measurements profiles. We will post some more observations as they become available.
Fine pictures of Arran! Hope the train of lows give you some dry weather.