BleakMidwinter

Bad enough here at only about 300ft, albeit nothing level with us to S or W for ten or twenty miles. Can't imagine 900ft. And this is only the Overture & Beginners, so to speak. Glasgow Council has closed almost everything, offices, libraries, galleries, museums, and sent staff home. Good for them. Hope others do the same vvv soon.

Best wishes to you, all three! At least you are there rather than trying to get there... Edinburgh winds have dropped slightly. My other half in Dunfermline is being flippant by text about "so much for this so-called storm, eh?" but it's already pretty bad this side of the Forth. May have to resort to sarcasm at him shortly...

We've got the start of the temp drop, from 10 all morning suddenly down to 8 C in 30 mins or less. How's Glasgow doing, Glasgow-guy? Looks like we're maybe 2 hours behind you...

Thankyou, gottolovethisweather. and wow, that is written by someone who really understands how to write clearly and steadily. I think I understood the lot! ...and now i wish I hadn't! :-) A jet stream's basically going to land on us this in the next few hours, eh? Oh well, I'll get the soup warming, then...

and please could someone with better meteorological understanding than me, explain what on earth (or off earth) a "sting jet" is? It sounds like something from Thunderbirds, but I'm guessing not... it sounds as if i'm about to have it hit my home in a few hours and I'd quite like to understand what's going on...

Well, that's on the bridge, and I'd guess the valley of the R.Forth and lack of anything around the bridge would be giving stronger winds than on land around - mebbe?! But yeah, "Jings" is pretty much what I thought too! The chart is already really pretty of their last 24 hours' readings frbadmin.blonde.net/weather-and-status-updates (takes a while to load, bear with it)

Edinburgh now winds of 40-68mph so it's starting already... still several hours to "the worst" so a bit nervy! Still 10C, and 982 pressure, all acc'g xc weather. Bright, sky has blue patches and intermittent sun. the road bridge is saying winds average 59mph, max gust 81mph, Westerly.

Forth road bridge http://frbadmin.blon...sday-8-december has a display saying winds are currently ave 42mph, gusting to high-50smph, NWerly - it's closed to everything except cars And this part of the bridge's website http://frbadmin.blonde.net/weather-and-status-updates has a graph showing the wind speeds over the last 24 hours, updated every ten minutes. Could make for interesting reading later on today!

xc weather is at http://www.xcweather.co.uk/ - you can click on the map and get basic forecast, or put a placename in the box top right for more detailed forecast, or you can hover the mouse over the map to get a quick view of current wind/ gusts, temp, pressure, etc. A friend in the Hebrides put me onto it - her husband is coastguard and they use it as it is reliable, in their view. I like it because even I can understand it :-)

glasgow-guy, you realise now that if you lose your internet connection or go offline for some other reason, we're all gonna assume you're under a chimney-stack! Just have to have faith in good Scots labourers of a century ago, I reckon... Yes, a friend in Wales emailed me to ask if I knew anything about whether it would be safe for her son to drive on Friday from Aberdeen to Edinburgh for a party and I replied that basically nobody knows much about Friday! As far as I can tell, it may dump snow all over Scotland, or it may dump snow on the W/N and rain on the E/S, or it may dump everything before it reaches the east... who knows, just now?!

kag, whereabouts are you? If you could add an approx location to your profile, it would be good! Sounds bad... I saw on xc that Malin Head was into 90 and the arrow was kinda pointing straight this way, eek!

We're another century-old house, but we had it checked some years ago and the surveyor said basically that house-building then was either 'solid' or 'jerry-built' and if it's stood this long in an exposed site then it isn't the 'jerry-built' sort - so hang onto that thought! You may lose slates, but the actual roof itself should hold.

xc weather is saying Edinburgh is still only 33-45mph and 10C, pressure 984, but it's coming at us from all directions so it feels stronger, from where I'm sitting! Five hours til it's at its forecast worst here, but already I am disinclined to go outdoors! Stay safe, westerly posters...

Woah, who turned out the lights. Just got VERY dark here, heavy rain now. About an hour ago, our thermometer said 9 degrees C, which seems much milder than up north, but then again it isn't a proper real thermometer, just one from a local hardware shop. It's a guide, though. Which is more than my late grandfather's barometer is. It claims the weather is set 'Dry' today, which I think might just be because it lives in a heated hallway? Anyone advise on where to site a barometer? We have an unheated entrance-porch thingummy - would that be better? It's ancient and pre-metric but it would still be of interest to me to have a better guide to the day...

It's getting a bit blowier in south Edinburgh and, like you Scott, we're on an exposed site open to SE, S and W. Fingers crossed...! Everything in the garden that can have a sack of grit or large boulder on it is now weighted down. Ran out of useful large stones so garage doors shut with two four-packs of 2-litre fizzy mineral water against 'em! Well, it's two 8-litre weights, right? :-) BleakMidwinter

Morning! Blustery and heavy spattering rain here in south Edinburgh. Radio4 finally mentioned it this morning - now quite straightforwardly, "police are advising motorists not to travel", so with luck that'll pin my mother down within the house all day, phew. A day for staying indoors. And watching... BleakMidwinter

Right. House has lots of food - check. No requirements for leaving house tomorrow - check. Bottle of Caol Ila - check. Key to coal-cellar, whereabouts of - check. Ok, I reckon that's me prepared. the MetO site says "Take Action" so I have done, I've prepared for tomorrow. Have a good night, all. And I hope very much to see you all again....!

The island of Lewis, not a person! don't want to derail the thread too much - info here on a thick-headed lummock of the first order http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-16068297

I'm kinda sitting waiting - having had irritating conversation with sceptical parents - one still thinks driving 25 miles out of the city on an open road that's usually very windswept at around 2.30pm tomorrow until 4pm tomorrow will be fine, oh and then again first thing on Friday 9am, and the other one doesn't believe anything's going to happen tomorrow because last weekend it said the dramatic weather would be over by Wednesday ie today, so it shows 'they' are always wrong. sigh. How did I grow up this logical? Am I in fact Mr Spock's secret child, swapped in the early weeks with my parents' real child, and grown up as a rational changeling in a housefull of bonkers people?

::shakes NS's hand - I knew Lewis in my younger years, and was shocked to hear the news. It hits hard in small communities, I know... I get the impression from the main forecasts that the snow on Friday is unlikely to be as far as Edinburgh, but that's little help! I'm still very much a novice, lurked here two years but still floundering madly much of the time in translating the more technical posts (top marks to the John Holmes chap for writing in actual plain English!) There is finally just a tiny breeze getting up here. The absolute stillness, with the knowledge of What Is To Come, was getting a bit spooky :-)

:: offers Northern Strath some strong rope and a few padlocks just to be sure::

I was also fairly startled. They reported a few days ago when a handful of schools in Scotland were closed by snow in December (newsworthy! Snow! in December! in the Scottish Highlands!), but they aren't reporting when entire school districts are closing schools and the police and MetO are waving huge neon signs saying "BIG BLOODY STORM!!!"... Also, weirdly, the BBC weather page for edinburgh only says it will be windy, 30-40mph. Doesn't mention the gusts and doesn't mention the RED WARNING, not even in lower-case letters...

Yeah, I'm unable to recall anything being warned as quite so... well, scary. I'm not quite sure what to expect except it's going to be bad. But it's just so unusual, both the intensity of the warnings and also the actual forecast - i mean, like someone said upthread you just don't get 80-90mph gusts that have travelled over miles and miles of inlandiness! It's kinda weird that there isn't a breath of wind out there just now - looking out the window, the leaves left on shrubs aren't moving at all, totally still and silent.... oo-er, maybe I will lock myself in the coal-cellar after all! It's Out There.... [big-scared-eyed emoticon!]

My reading of the forecasts is that up til around mid-afternoon, it will only be very very windy - the dangerous stuff seems to be hitting between estimated 3pm and 6pm Thursday - so I suppose closing the schools for an entire morning of perfectly okay weather would be a bit of a skive. Plus it means those parents who'll have to take time off work or pay for childcare will only have to take/ pay for a half-day. And if there's no reason to shut the schools in the morning...

Made me giggle a bit too - sorely tempted to take photograph of random bit of sky and send it in saying "here is a picture what I took of The Strong Wind near where I live..." :-)