Benvironment

Yeah it was weird, can't say I've ever experienced that. There was cloud below us and above us, with that eerie yellow light, and then pinkish haar came rolling up the hill accompanied by rain, lightning and thunder. Really odd. Couldn't take my eyes off it!

Aww that's an AWESOME photo!!!

Here it comes again. Rinse and repeat.

Foggy. Still. 14C. Again. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I had an amazing sunrise up above the haar in Fife on Monday.....and for once I actually filmed footage rather than simply taking photos

You can almost see it happening in real time. We've fallen from 19.5 to 15.9C in just 40 mins!

We've been more fortunate here, having 82mm according to my rain gauge in March April and May, and the six Lomonds reservoirs are all full. I remember meeting someone from Turriff back in February in West Lothian, and him saying he couldn't believe how waterlogged the ground was in the Central Belt, cos up in Turriff he said he could roll his fields if he wanted to. Amazing how that wee northeast corner has had such different weather to the rest of the country. Caithness to a lesser extent too.

Didn't reach 20C today. 19.1C the high, and that came early at 10:35. Back down to 15C now.

Cooler here today. Yesterday it was 20C before 9am, currently 18.7C just before midday. I do like a cooling east wind when it's not haary

Same here. Hit a high of 24.7C about an hour ago but then the wind veered easterly and we're down a degree on that now.

19C already....so poised to break my Fife May record this afternoon. The weather station had us at 25.9C yesterday, which was only our second day of 20C or above since August, and the warmest it's been in 308 days

Checked my weather data and yep, we had a gust of 71.6mph up here on 23rd May 2011, with max sustained speeds around 55mph.

It was surreal....cos it was mild and sunny but VERY windy. I vividly remember how loud it was. Much noisier than winter storms up here due to all the leaves on the trees, and we watched several large limbs fall off the big sycamores out front. I’d need to check but I think we had sustained winds over 60mph for a spell that day. In other news, yesterday was our first ‘20C or above’ since 27th August!

Yesterday was very wet here, btw. 12mm from that stubborn red blob that sat over us for an hour or more. The house sprung a leak as a result! Just been looking at my data for April, and it's ended up being my 2nd mildest since moving here in 2010. Mean was 7.8C, but nowhere near the 9.6C of 2011. Just one air frost, and no falling or lying snow.

Oh don't say that!!

I haven’t been off the hill in over a month so haven’t seen traffic, but I’ve heard it. There’s a background roar from Glenrothes and the A92 this week and last week that wasn’t there’s the first few weeks. In other news, 10.2mm of rain today! Shame it couldn’t have come two days earlier and saved the reed beds on the Tay.

Awww lovely! On the lookout for them here but there’s not much blaeberry out yet, so will be a wee while yet.

I think it was already over Dundee at this point. It just hangs there for ages and then it's like a dam breaks.

Anything but fine blue sky day here. East coast murk.....but it's just notched down to 4.9C, which is the first time in 26 hours that it hasn't been 5.something!

Ooo, SNAP! 11.9C the high here too, which makes it our warmest day on the hill since October.

Yep on frosty nights it’s always a bit warmer up here, but for the previous nine winters the number of air frosts has been anywhere between 20 and 40. 7 is woeful in comparison. A strange year And yep, spot on with Laggan. It’s Geal Charn

Gawd, still on just 7 since 1st December! I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being the first March I've had here without one.

Best conditions I've had for over two years, yesterday. The snow might have blown around a lot but it was still spread widely enough to give good deep cover on western slopes. All eastern aspects were bulging though, and unsurprisingly there were a couple of ominous rumbles late morning as the sun came up.

Totalled up all the stats for winter (Dec to Feb) up here on the hill, and it came out as the joint warmest I've had since moving here in 2010. Mean temp of 4.5C, which ties it with last winter. The previous nine winter means were, respectively, 4.5C, 2.5C, 4.4C, 3.8C, 2.6C, 3.7C, 2.3C, 3.2C, 1.5C. That last one was for 2010/11, so was obviously that much colder. January 2020 had a mean of 5.2C, which is a whopping 1.7C warmer than my previous Jan record (of 3.5C in 2017), and December's mean of 4.9C made it the 3rd mildest I've recorded. February's mean came in at 3.4C, some way behind last year's bonkers 5.8C.....but ultimately it was the final two weeks of Feb that brought this winter's overall mean down to something a tad less shocking than the 5C it was headed for at the start of the month. Feb was still 4th mildest though, even though it has been the snowiest we've had. 10 days with snow falling, and 10 days with snow lying. This winter was also the least frosty I've recorded. Just 7 days with air frosts. The previous nine winters had, working backwards from 2018/19....20, 38, 15, 20, 44, 12, 44, 31, 46 days of air frosts. Quite startling really. All in all, winter has been mild and green here on the hill, with high night time temperatures and lack of frosts the main headline.

We got three inches in the end, but that had reduced by half after a couple of hours. Headed out up the hill as soon as the snow stopped to try and beat the thaw....which was great fun in the moody murk, but got utterly utterly soaked in the process. So wet out there!