Ravelin

A rather unremarkable couple of days here Thu and Fri, hence no comments from me. There was still quite a bit of snow at the top of the hill on Thu when I walked the dog, but icy where it'd been compacted and soggy where it hadn't been. Avoided going anywhere near it today, opting to walk along a just slightly icy quiet road instead. Got a surprise 10mins ago when I threw the dog out for the last time before bed, there's a slight covering of snow lying that wasn't there ealier. Must have caught an isolated shower as nothing was forecast. Temperature has been sat around 2C most of the day I suppose, currently 0.7C Wife got to her parents safely on Thu but said the drive was far too wet and windy to be enjoyable. We're meeting up again at my folks in the central belt on Hogmanay, guess what day we were planning on coming back north again from the latest GFS forecast....

It's been 'stuck' on that picture from early afternoon yesterday, currently still timestamped 27th 13:22 on website. I'm sure the ones from the ski centre are outdated too, as are most for Glenshee. Likely connectivity or power issues. We'll yesterday's snow turned back to rainin the afternoon and there's little evidence left of it around the house this morning. Wife left earlier for the trip to NW England. Glad she postponed it, and well done to those who managed to make journeys yesterday through that weather. Still stunned that it wasn't an Amber warning for at least some of the country.

I take that back, beginning to stick to the grass and driveway now. Out of interest MetO forecast for now says 2C and rain, XC Weather says 0C and snow, Yr.No 1C and a sleety mix. Weather station up the road says 0.5C and window says snow.

Can't see out of any of the front windows now. Proper snow now but struggling to settle. So what do you do when your off work and weather is like this... pot of turkey broth is on the go, along with fresh bread.

Longe window currently... VID_20231227_102703348.mp4 Totally obscured half way up now.

Temperature creeping down, now 1.2C, with wind strength going up. Now wet snow battering off the front windows of the house. If only it'd been a degree or two colder then this would have been a truely awesome blizzard.

Way too dark to tell for certain but it sounds very rainlike rattling off the bedroom window in the strong wind. Local weather station said 2.4C around 6:30am but has dropped off to 1.6C currently. Doubt I'll be going anywhere today, the dog will have to content herself indoors. We'll see tomorrow if its stayed snow further up the hill.

Similar here, blue skies today with a covering of snow at the house. A lot more snow just a bit higher up the hill where we walked the dog early afternoon, but a keen wind at times. Unfortunately didn't take any photos. Currently -1.7C outside and who knows quite what tomorrow will bring. Wife was going to head to her folks in NW England tomorrow for a few days but has delayed the drive until Thursday. Wood beside the stove has been restocked ready for us just to hunker down and stay cosy for the day.

Earlier snow turned to rain for a bit, so I took the dog for a walk up the hill and just 100m or so higher it was proper snowing, with a decent cover. It has turned back to snow at the house too at some point late afternoon as there's a dusting here too now. Next question, will Wednesday's forecast heavy precipitation be rain or snow, probably rain by the looks of the 850s unfortunately.

Heavier now, wet looking though. VID_20231225_130301637.mp4

It was very light and brief, wouldn't have shown on a picture. Maybe later when it's supposed to be heavier, if it's snow, and if it isn't too dark.

Well that makes it an official white Xmas here, it's snowing lightly.

So impressive even aliens in flying saucers came to see it.

Very impressive display this evening.... Seen them before, but not anything like this impressive. Photos don't really do them justice either. Oh, very windy outside too.

Temperature rose rapidly from around 9pm yesterday evening to hit a high of 9.1C overnight, but has now dropped off a bit to 7.5C. Most of yesterday's snow has now gone as expected , but surprisingly some small remnants remain. Very little cloud around so far this morning, but pretty windy. I think some of us will manage a 'technical' white Xmas tomorrow , with some falling snow. Not likely to be much settles though. Edit: Nacreous clouds visible here too, but can't get decent photo due to position of the sun in relation to them. Edit 2: Managed it...

Temperature here is still only 0.5C, which means there's still a fair bit of snow lying despite it having turned to rain for most of the daylight hours. Real soggy mess though, would rather it just went, and last thing I'd want would be for it to freeze up.

@TillyS Sadly even the Lecht scenes are likely to turn browner again as that front pushes further East, such are the vagaries of the Scottish weather. Hopefully after Xmas the temp will stay cold enough that even if we don't get low level snow, the ski resorts can get, and keep, some. Can't remember the exact winter, but not that long ago we had one where it was frequent cold rain at low levels but the hills got plastered. At Glenshee they had to dig out some of the pomma lines, it was that deep. Only time I can remember being towed uphill through a virtually head height channel of dug out snow.

Looks fairly wet stuff, but hey, it's snow... Edit: Just been out to the bins, it's very wet stuff, cos it's now raining. Better looked at from inside the house.

Been in a strange pattern of waking up around 5am this week and its just happened again. It's very white looking outside, but I'll have to wait until it's light to see quite how deep, assuming it survives until then.

Certainly for north of Scotland and Orkney/Shetland, would have thought an Amber was warranted. I'm sure I heard all schools in Orkney are shut tomorrow due to the forecast. Breezy here already, but nothing major.

For 23rd to 25th I currently have Yr.no (0z ECM) saying barely getting above freezing here with wintry showers, yet XC Weather (12z GFS) saying mild, windy and wet for the same days. Spread on GFS ensemblies is all over the place though beyond the 22nd. I don't think any of the models currently have clue what will happen after Friday.

I'm sure there wasn't supposed to be much in the way of cold before the very end of the week for anyone, and even here we don't get anything close to cold until after Thursday/Friday's windy spell. Check what Yr.No and XC Weather show for Coatbridge. Both are pretty much raw model outputs, former ECM output, latter GFS. They can vary from run to run, quite wildly at times, so take them with a pinch of salt. MetO forecasts in the short term, say a couple of days, are good, but I find the further ahead they go the more they 'average out' the temps, and they rarely show much in the way of precipitation more than a day or two ahead unless it's frontal. As the days gets closer, then during winter the MetO forecast almost always trends the temp down as a colder period approaches. Currently MetO have Alford at max/min 4/1 for Fri and 3/0 Sat, but I'll not be at all surprised if by Wed those, are both forecast a couple of degrees lower at least.

Is it? That's a week away though so could, and likely will, easily change in either direction. Anything beyond that is pure fantasy for the timebeing. Currently 11.1C here, yesterday varied between 9.8C and 12.2C.

Today's 12z runs, GFS gusts at 10m and ECM 850s wind speed...

I'd say it's 50:50 for a noteably windy period at the end of next week, beyond that is anyones guess.