The real Lomond snowstorm

Finally some snow overnight here. Probably around 10cm starting about 03:00. Amber snow warning on Met Office for this morning. It was still around -5C overnight so it seems quite "fluffy" but it has started warming up and it now looks though that it is going to be washed away by several hours of rain. It was nice while it lasted.....

-11C last night. Still no snow but who needs snow when you have .... hoarfrost

Pretty much every winter is a "winter of discontent" on these forums

The nearest met office weather station to me is saying it was -8C overnight warming up to -7C by 10-am. The depressing part of that is, it is showing "light rain" for a couple of those hours when it is -8C or -7C. That's when you know that the weather cards are not going to fall your way this cold spell.

How many redheads are there? Less than 2% of the world's population has red hair. The highest concentration of redheads is in Scotland (13%), followed by Ireland (10%).

And this link will show you the height of the sun throughout the year at solar noon. You'll also be able to see how high the sun is at any particular time by clicking on individual dates https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/manchester I'll also add that UV A rays will tan and burn you but won't generate Vitamin D by skin exposure. It is the UV B rays that are required.

Have a look at this link. https://www.hsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Vitamin-D.pdf

Your skin needs UV B rays to generate Vitamin D. They only reach you when the sun is around 45 degrees above the horizon. American websites state 50 degrees above the horizon In lowland Scotland that means around noon from the middle of May to the middle of August and even around the solstice we only get four or five hours where the sun is high enough. Obviously only an hour or so at either end. The season will be longer in the South of England but only two to three weeks either side. And a study showed that in order to get what was regarded as sufficient to last you through winter in the UK, you would need to have your legs exposed to the sun as well as your arms and head AND would need to be outside in the middle of the day pretty much every day in that period. And avoid the sun cream. I think a summer holiday to sunny climes should be available on the NHS. And us in Scotland should get an extra week later in they year.

Not unless the Earth changes its orbit Where I live the sun rises 11 degrees above the horizon at its highest point at noon at Christmas time and even in your neck of the woods it is only around 15 degrees. You may be sitting there in your T-shirt but you're not going to get a tan from that. BTW, you need around 45 degrees above the horizon to generate Vitamin D from the sun on your skin

I was told this by the person I was staying with in Boat of Garten who was a weather enthusiast, that these temperatures had been measured down the road in Nethy Bridge IIRC, on someones garden weather station. It was probably about ten years ago so can't remember all the details, just a conversation. He did say people in the area had recorded lower than the official lowest temperature on multiple occasions. I thought it was regarding the 2010 winter but I may be wrong and it was the 1995 winter he was referring to.

Having spoken to people who live in the Aviemore area, it should be noted that this is just the official weather station figures. Some people recorded below -30C in more sheltered locations and frost hollows in winter 2010 (and I think 1995). Altnaharra IS a frost hollow which is why it so consistently produces amongst the coldest temperatures. I think they put the weather station there because the area is so remote there is no other village nearby. The "A road" through the village is a 39 mile single track road.

I use mine to sweep up the leaves in the garden The only time it was used for its intended purpose in recent years was when I had to dig out my car after the "Beast". And as it took me three days to get home from my work trip to Southern climes the snow had already started to melt (though it was still 2 feet deep.)

Ultimately the sun effects everything to do with the weather as it is our main source of energy. The "Maunder Minimum" in the 17th and 18th centuries is believed to be one of the most dramatic in human timescales. The effects have been more dramatic over much longer timescales. Back, earlier in its life, about 2.5 billion years ago, the earth could only keep what we would regard as a habitable temperature through greenhouse gases. The sun's output has grown as it has matured since then The atmosphere at that time consisted mostly of methane and carbon dioxide and those greenhouse gases were necessary to preserve enough heat to keep water liquid. This was before any complex life had evolved, only bacteria in the seas, and the land was barren. Then bacteria that previously had thrived in the methane rich atmosphere developed photosynthesis. This meant the bacteria absorbed carbon dioxide and produced oxygen like plants do today. And this has the effect of first of all poisoning the seas and killing most the of bacteria that had not evolved photosynthesis (and some that had) and then later putting the earth into the coldest and longest ice age in its history. The ice totally covered the planet and lasted for an estimated 200+ million years. Oxygen is very reactive and when this was first produced it reacted with iron in the oceans and produced iron oxide and that poisoned the seas. In addition the oxygen itself was also poisonous to the earlier bacterial types. The oxygen also reacted with the methane gas in the atmosphere producing carbon dioxide and water. Because methane is a much more powerful global warming gas than carbon dioxide this had the effect of cooling the earth and creating "snowball earth". The additional water created will also have frozen reflecting more of the sun's heat. And this is why astronomers are looking for oxygen signatures on exoplanets as the only way we know that oxygen can remain in an atmosphere is if something living continually replenishes it.

While I agree with you that mankind has changed the weather more rapidly than occurs naturally , you don't need to go that far back to periods where it was substantially different. We are in an ice age which has lasted about 2.6 million years and within our current ice age there are cycles where the ice has grown significantly or retreated significantly. The definition of an ice age is permanent ice sheets and glaciation, usually at the poles. The current interglacial (warmer) period in the current ice age only began about 12,000 years ago and the climate has fluctuated in cycles even in that 12,000 year period. There were two spells of two of three thousand years when it was noticeably warmer than today as well as some periods when it was cooler. As these climate cycles are complex and not perfectly predictable, unfortunately climate change deniers use them as "proof" that global warming isn't working and ignore all the evidence to the contrary that (nearly) all climate scientists agree on.

I do realise I am lucky this time. I do keep an eye on energy markets so decided to fix for two years when I realised prices were rising and actually my current deal is 50% higher than my previous deal which I also got at the right time.

No, I have gas heating. My combined gas and electric bill for my semi detached house was £60 last month. The govt subsidy per month is £66 so I was actually paid £6 for using my energy.

I fixed my energy costs for two years, about a year ago, so I am paying significantly less than the price cap. And the mild weather means my energy cost last month was less than the £66/month Govt subsidy so I actually got my energy for free. This will change as the winter arrives of course and no doubt if it stays high for winter 2023/2024 I will have a severe price hike but at the moment things are fine.

The same here at Loch Lomond. It rained at least some of the time on 29 of the last 31 days after a dry September. The ground is saturated, the Loch and local river is close to bursting its bank in a few places and it has been very dull and overcast.

April is, on average, the second driest month for me locally and is only fractionally behind May which is the driest month. And this one is following the trend with some lovely dry and sunny weather recently. Then usually it gets progressively wetter as you go through summer and when the tourists are at their peak in August we get more than twice as much rain as London gets in December or January.

A beautiful but chilly day today with that clarity that only a Northerly can bring. Two walks around two different local parks and after the second one it snowed briefly followed by a couple of heavy hail showers despite the strong sunshine. Nothing hung around for long in the sunshine but it added interest.

Another gloriously sunny day here again. The third day in a row of what looks like being dawn to dusk sunshine and blue sky. Starting out with a thick frost a few degrees below zero and ending up around 10C and light winds. The last two weeks has actually been pretty good (after 4 weeks of gales, storms and frequent rain before that) with most days dry and even the rain days only running a little damp. And more importantly we've had a lot more brightness and sunshine after what has been a fairly gloomy winter.

My nearest weather station says I get an average of 36 hrs in January, so it is better but it is hardly going to have the tourists coming for a top up of vitamin D. Realistically, the sun is so low in Reykjavik in January that you'll probably not see it unless you're in quite an open space. Even here it is between 11 and 17 degrees at solar noon so in the unlikely event of a sunny day you're most likely only going to see it in the hours around noon and it is quite red shifted due to the low angle in early January.

Though long summer evenings are nice, I have to say that when we get past 17 hours here it does mess with my body clock a bit. Even in cloudy Scotland. I'm not sure that extremely long days are an advantage. I know when it starts to get light at 03:30 I quite often wake up. It is not just the light but the sounds of the birds singing and squabbling, which is nice at a sensible time but... I do agree that the worst part of UK weather and especially the wetter parts of the country is the gloom. You can go three weeks and never see blue sky or sun here and it rains about 200 days a year. Reykjavik certainly gets a lot less rain than I do, less rainy days and overall it is less windy as well, though how much wind you receive is very much dependent on local conditions and geography. It also, as you say, has pretty terrible summers even by Scottish standards. I think if I was looking for an ideal climate I would look south to the Alps, with warm summers, plenty of thunderstorms and mostly snowy winters and relatively quiet as far as the wind is concerned (they go hillwalking with umbrellas, if you did that in Scotland you'd do a Mary Poppins)

They do live in a very beautiful place though perhaps a little too barren for my tastes to want to live there. Much as I love mountains I am also fond of trees and forests and more greenery than they can provide. Plus I don't think I'd like to live in a country where there are is virtually no daylight for spells in winter. Finally, the total population is roughly the same as Stoke-on-Trent and that is a little too small for me even though they enjoy a great standard of living. BTW Glasgow being the nearest large city with direct flights to Iceland, used to get quite a lot of Icelandic people coming to do their Christmas shopping though I'm not sure if it still happens in the age of internet shopping.

The problem is that in this part of the world we haven't had several weeks of nothingness. We've had three and a half weeks of almost continuous strong winds and gales combined with rain/sleet or squally showers. Pretty much what we're going to get for the forseeable. We did have plenty of very gloomy, calm and relatively dry "nothingness " in December and some of January but since then we've caught the southern edge of a conveyor belt of systems coming across the Atlantic. The only consolation is that I don't live in Iceland where I'm sure they will be saying that I'm lucky.