GulberwickWeather

Sunny intervals and showers. Current obs @ 1230 UTC Temp: 9.6C Dewpoint: 6.9C Wind Chill: 8.9C Humidity: 82% Wind: WNW @ 3.5kts Gust: 7.8kts High Gust: 8.5kts Rainfall: 1.4mm Pressure: 1007.96hPa (falling slowly)

Unpleasant morning with heavy rain but drier and brighter now. Current obs @ 1346 UTC Temp: 9.1C Dewpoint: 7.4C Wind Chill: 6.9C Wind: NE @ 5.2kts Gust: 11.3kts High Gust: 20 kts Rainfall: 4.4mm Pressure: 1007.89hPa (falling slowly)

A breezy day with blustery showers and occasional haze with reduced vis due to volcanic ash cloud from Grimsvotn. Current conditions @ 1626 UTC Temp: 9.1C Dewpoint: 5.8C Wind Chill: 6.3C Humidity: 80% Wind: WSW @ 11.3kts Gust: 23.5kts High gust: 33.9kts Rainfall: 0.8mm Pressure: 1002.17hPa (rising slowly)

Clouds of ash off and on today, most of it being blown away though by the strong winds. Very hazy at times though with reduced vis.

I've noticed my VantageVue doing something strange! It won't report rainfall when the wind is SE'ly! Take today for example, strong SE'ly winds and raining most of the morning but no rainfall recorded - this is the second time I've noticed this. Any ideas what could be happening?

Satellite picture of the plume from Grimsvotn taken just 9 mins ago Satpic Grimsvotn

Quite a blowy day with some heavy, blustery showers Current obs at 1148 UTC Temp: 11.1C Dewpoint: 7.4C Wind Chill: 8.3C Wind: SSE @ 20 kts Gust: 22.6kts Highest gust: 27.8kts @ 0534 UTC Pressure: 1005.83hPa (rising slowly) Rainfall: 3.2mm

Fairly hefty hail shower here at the moment. Air temp 6.8C and falling. Wind Chill temp 3.2C and falling. Dewpoint 3.9C and falling.

Today, myself and a colleague had the honour of representing our colleagues at an oral evidence session of the House of Commons Transport Select Committee held in Stornoway. Never did I expect to have to do such a thing but then never did I expect an organisation, supposedly responsible for safety of life at sea to contemplate doing what they are suggesting in slashing the Coastguard service. There comes a time when you have to take a stand and say "this is wrong" and for me and my colleagues this was it. I am enormously proud of the fact that not once has any of us complained about the loss of our own jobs and the potential loss of everything we have worked for but rather fought this fight on the basis that it represents a threat to the safety and indeed lives of those we serve, for that is the very essence of "public service" something that some people seem to have great difficulty understanding. We were given the best possisble hearing by the Committee and it is very clear they share our concerns. The Chair, Louise Ellman MP made it very clear that as a resuilt of what we have said to the Committee, she will now be asking some very searching questions of the Shipping Minister, Mike Penning and the Chief Exec of the MCA Sir Alan Massey, when they appear before the Committee on 24 May. That session is likely to be live on Parliament TV and should be worth watching, as Mrs Ellmann is a worthy successor to the Committees previous Chair, Gwyneth Dunwoody.

Cheers guys, I will do my best.

Well, so now we can give evidence to the Transport Select Committee as long as we do so as PCS Union Reps and not as Coastguards! A pathetic exercise in semantics which only makes the Govt/MCA look even more foolish than they already do. It doesn't alter one bit what I'm likely to say to the Committee or indeed what has already been said by myself or my colleagues to the TSC in writing and which is already in the public domain on the Parliament website!

So much for freedom of speech. We have been told by our own management that as civil servants we cannot give evidence before the Select Committee and should therefore decline our invitations to attend! Absolute disgrace. As you can imagine this is causing quite a hoo-ha with the chair of the Select Committee threatening charges of "Contempt of Parliament." Western Isles MP Angus MacNeill has accused the Govt of acting like something out of the Soviet Union! In my position as a Union rep with PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union) I found myself being interviewed on the local Beeb station (BBC Radio Shetland) today. I hate giving interviews lol. Link below to a brief article in the Telegraph: [url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8505750/Shipping-minister-embroiled-in-row-with-MPs.html"]Telegraph story[/url]

Current conditions up here in the chilly North! Temp: 8.8C Dewpoint: 8.4C Wind: SE @ 3.5kt Gust: 11.3kts Pressure: 1019.04hpa (steady) Rainfall: nil Wx: Overcast with mist and fog patches.

So thats it confirmed, I and a colleague will be travelling to Stornoway next week to give evidence before the Transport Select Committee about the current plans for HM Coastguard. Its quite a responsibility but one that I'm actually quite looking forward to. It's not often you get the chance to represent your colleagues at such a vital moment and I shall do my level best to do what I can to dissuade the Govt/MCA from embarking upon what I and my colleagues regard as a flawed and dangerous course. Thats one of the major problems though. Their proposals have not involved asking us, the professionals who do this job day-in day-out for our expert opinion. They have been dreamt up by a management team who, apart from 1 person, have absolutely NO OPERATIONAL COASTGUARD EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER! The only one who does, it was some years ago that he last worked in an operational environment. How can people like that possibly decide what is operationally safe? Furthermore, most of them have come from a "corporate" background and have no previous public sector experience or indeed any background in an emergency service!

I wrote something in here, it's been a while! I've been kind of busy over the past few months. As some of you may know, the Government in its cost cutting frenzy has decided that we can do without half our Coastguard stations around the coast and Shetland Coastguard was one of those slated for closure. Since those proposals were made public on 16th December I have been heavily involved in the campaign to keep a fully-functioning Coastguard station here in the isles, watching over some 36,500 square miles of some of the roughest seas around the UK coastline. I and a number of my colleagues have pretty much lived, breathed and eat the Save Shetland Coastguard campaign for some 5-odd months now and to be honest I am pretty exhausted. That said, much of the hard work is now done with the consultation process due to end on 5 May and I am convinced that we have now moved the Government to a point where what was originally proposed is not what will happen (the Shipping Minister has repeatedly said this himself recently). That said the job is not yet done as no firm decisions have yet been made and are not likely to be until the Transport Select Committee finish their investigations. Hopefully yours truly will have the opportunity to represent this station before the Committe on 19th May when they convene in Stornoway for an evidence gathering session. I can only hope that common sense will prevail and that we come out of this with something rather more sensible than what has been proposed so far. On the weather front I've been busy renewing my website to coincide with the fact that I now have a new weather station (a Davis Vantage Vue). I run it using the Cumulus software from Sandaysoft in Orkney, which is rather good. I've been able to design the site around the webtags provided by the software and so far it all seems to be working well. I've one or two pages still to do but the ones that are up are functioning as they should. The new site is here: [url="http://gulberwickweather.co.k/weather/index.html"][url="http://gulberwickweather.co.uk/weather/index.html"]GW website[/url] [/url]

Nice and sunny but still quite chilly, especially at night. Current conditions @ 1513 Local Temp: 11.2C Wind Chill: 9.7C Dewpoint: 7.5C Wind: NE @ 6.1kts Gust: 13.9kts

Fine sunn y day although some cloud and light rain is expected overnight. Conditions @ 2045 Temp: 7.2C Wind Chill: 5.6C Dewpoint: 5.2C Humidity@ 87% Rainfall: 0mm Wind: 4.7kts SE GUst: 8.7kts Pressure: 1026.96hPa (falling slowly)

Conditions @ 1628 Local Temp: 12.5C Dew: 8.2C Humidity: 75% Rainfall: nil Wind (avg): 2.8kts Wind (gust): 9.6kts ESE Pressure: 1017.51hpa (steady) Lovely day, nice and sunny

Please place your weather reports here. Current conditions @ 0530 UTC Temp: 0.9C Dew: 0.6C Wind Chill: -0.2C Wind: WSW @ 2.9kts Gust: WSW @ 7.3kts Pressure: 1018hpa Rainfall: nil Wx: Clear, dry, touch of frost

Current conditions @ 0816 UTC Wx: Heavy snow Temp: 0.6C Dewpoint: 0.3C Wind Chill: -6.5C Wind: NNW @ 21.4kts (force 5) Gust: 34.9kts Pressure: 985hpa (steady) Humidity: 98%

Current conditions @ 1825 UTC Temp: 0.1C Dewpoint: -0.2C Wind Chill: -5.5C Wind: NNW @ 9kts Pressure: 1019hpa (rising slowly) Humidity: 98% Wx: Frosty

Current conditions @ 0350 UTC Temp: 0.5C Dewpoint: 0.2C Wind Chill: -3.2C Wind: SSW @ 6.5kts Gust: SSW @ 9.4kts Pressure: 1009hpa (falling slowly) Wx: Heavy snow showers

Very little snow overnight or during today but looks like a load more to come overnight and tomorrow! Current conditions @ 1545 UTC Temp: 0.9C Dewpoint: -7.6C Wet Bulb: -1.9C Wind Chill: -2.8C Overnight min: 0.4C Wind: NNW @ 6.8kts Gust: NNW @ 12kts Gust today: NNW @ 35.3kts Pressure: 1016hpa (falling slowly) Wx: Occasional cloud, dry, cold.

Current conditions @ 1620 UTC Temp: 0.7C Dewpoint: -0.5C Wind Chill Temp: -5.4C Wind: NNW @ 15.6kts Gust: NNE @ 28.2kts Pressure: 1016hpa (falling slowly) Wx: Heavy snow showers

Current conditions @ 1200 Temp: 0.8C Dewpoint: 0.5C Wet Bulb: 0.6C Wind Chill: -4.9C Wind: NNW @ 13.7kts Gust: NNW @ 32.2kts Pressure: 1016hpa (falling slowly) Wx: Snow showers