Sanserit

Beautiful day here in Livingston, no idea of temp except that it was cold enough for the pavements to have iced over enough for me to fall gracefully whilst out with the dogs this morning. My own fault for not bringing appropriate footwear with me.

Merry Christmas fellow Kilties! Hope Santa has been good to you all. Been very wet today in Livingston and purposely not looked for any photos of Banchory just in case I’m missing out.

Surprised no one’s posted yet about the snow this weekend north of the border. Daughter had snow on Saturday in Livingston and I got my first proper dusting in Aberdeenshire on Sunday afternoon.

Temperature continued to rise slowly overnight to above freezing, currently reporting 2.8c at home. Here in Stonehaven, it’s dreich and damp. Interestingly, on the way in to work this morning via the A93/AWPR A90 (wasn’t taking any chances on the Slug with three dodgy tyres), the temperature jumped from 1c to 4 c in the space of a couple of hundred meters at Drumoak. There were also two cars that had come a cropper on the downward slope of the A90 towards the bridge crossing the Dee, both hitting the central barrier within 50m of each other.

Following an ice day yesterday where the high got to the heady heights of -2.2c, today has been another bright but cold day with cloud cover coming in late afternoon and a wee shower of snow. Overnight low was -7.6c and temperature has been steadily rising since the cloud cover came in, currently -0.5c and snowing lightly.

Overnight low of 2.0c, currently 2.5c. Surprised there wasn’t a frost last night given that there were clear patches when I put the dogs out in the garden before bed.

South of Stonehaven, the sun is shining and I’ve had to close my office blind so I can see my screen. To the north however, is a different story. Sky is full of very dark threatening clouds so something is brewing me thinks. Felt really raw when I nipped across to the shop to grab my lunch just now, a definite change in wind direction.

Car got an advisory for the front tyres when it was in for MOT last week so need to pull my finger out and get replacements sorted out. I’ve run on all-weather tyres for last 6 years or so and currently have Michelin cross-climates on from Costco but seems they’ve stopped stocking them. I don’t do in the Mad Hoose as to be honest, I don’t understand it whereas you guys explain things in a much easier to understand way so will stick around here…the banter’s nae bad either Meanwhile, in my part of Deeside, it’s currently 3.2c and dry with a chance of being blinded by a low sun while heading to Stonehaven on AWPR.

If you were over Ellon way or out Deeside, I’d say I know what it would be but I know we have no farms taking this particular product in your direction. However, I know that there are farms take waste from Brewdog so it might have been that. If it was offloaded by Sinclair, then I’d be confident.

I gave it a miss and stayed home with the dogs. Had a red alert for the aurora on my phone but as soon as I opened the door to head out in search of them, the heavens opened. Typical! Heading to Aberdeen tonight for their display so fingers crossed it’s a) dry and b) the aurora show up for the drive home!

Just added the rainfall so far this month (315mm in my back garden) to my spreadsheet and we’ve surpassed the total for the whole of last year already with 2 months, 2.5 days still to go - 887.57mm vs 863.48mm. Still got a bit to go to beat 2021’s total of 917.79mm but if the forecast for this week holds up, that will be beaten easily. Hibernation is looking like the way forward…until we get colder temperatures and some snow in the forecasts that is. Currently 9.3c, down from an overnight high of 10.2c with a very confused weather graph as the clocks went back at 2am

The rain stopped here just before 5pm and the skies have cleared to give a chilly evening, temperature currently 2.9c and falling. It was nice to be able to see the stars when I let the dogs out for a last pit stop before bed. Total rain recorded over the duration of Storm Babet in my back garden amounted to 151.64mm. Am I right in thinking if that had been snow, I’d have had 1.5 metres of it? If so, shame this wasn’t December, it would have been better for those affected by the flooding too because the melt would have been gradual.

Rainfall has slowed on Deeside overnight with 14.8mm recorded compared to around 27mm for same period yesterday. Wind still gusting but doesn’t sound quite as strong as it has been. Forgot to add temperature, currently 6.4c and been hovering between 6.0c and 6.6c since midnight.

We had a reasonably dry afternoon in Stonehaven with the sun making a brief appearance. The Slug road was clear in time for the drive home but lots of debris in evidence, running water draining out of the fields and remains of trees that had been cut up to be removed after being downed yesterday. River Dee didn’t look any higher at Crathes than it did on 7th October which is a good thing I suppose. My pws is reporting 31mm of rain since midnight making a total so far for this event of 107.2mm, high temp of 9.6c and currently 5.7c. Have decided against travelling to Edinburgh tomorrow and the ice hockey game I was going to watch looks like being called off in any case.

Stonehaven folk were queuing for sandbags at the council yard behind my office this morning with a steady flow of folk throughout the day. After hearing about downed trees on the Slug road, decided not to chance it and went home via the A90 and A93. Very strong gusts on A90 followed by quite a few large pools of water on A93. My PWS is reporting 53mm of rain since 9am and tbh no idea what the wind speeds are as my station seems to record in a strange way and the Wunderground map is having issues so I can’t see what neighbouring stations are reporting. The filling station next to our office closed at 4pm and it looked like the Morrisons in Banchory had also closed early but not 100% sure about that. Wind is still howling loudly outside and there appears to be an abundance of leaves in the garden.

Decided to postpone my trip to Edinburgh until Saturday morning rather than driving south from Stonehaven through the red warning area in the dark after work on Friday. Daughter and I didn’t have any plans for that evening anyway so it makes sense. Wind coming from NE/ENE direction and blowing between 5 and 10 mph currently. Tidied away the furniture for the winter when I got in from work so hopefully there’s nothing in danger of taking off over the next couple of days. Expecting the Dee to burst its banks as spectacularly as it did in December 2015 if the amounts of rain forecast are accurate but hoping we won’t suffer the power failures that we did as a result of Arwen. Stay safe everyone!

First frost of the season for me this morning with a low of -0.2c at 8am and temperature only rising slowly despite the blue skies, currently 2.0c. I also got the weather warning thru yesterday for later in the week, supposed to be heading south to my daughter’s in Livingston so we can go watch an ice hockey game. Not looking forward to that drive if it all pans out.

Cracking day on Deeside today, blue skies with the odd cloud scooting across and a decent drying wind. High of 11c, currently 2.8c and dropping. I’m expecting to wake up to a ground frost tomorrow, first one of the season.

Finished yesterday with 39.88mm and already today there’s been another 21.08mm. Attended a wedding yesterday at Maryculter House and the Dee was extremely swollen then. The roads had a lot of lying water on the way home so it wasn’t a pleasant drive. I dread to think how much worse things are today with the local water levels.

Evening all, 19.5mm of rain fallen in my wee bit of Deeside since 4.30pm and one very unsettled dog thanks to the gusts of wind and the neighbour's various piles of carp blowing about in the wind - fastest gust hit 28km around 30 minutes ago (not entirely convinced the windspeeds being shown on all our local stations are accurate). It'll be interesting to see if there are any trees down on the way to work in Stonehaven tomorrow morning.

Have just seen this so sorry for late reply. I’m having issues with my weather station but it’s down to outages with my broadband, provided by TalkTalk. I know it’s dropped because I’ll lose my stream on the tv and that time matches with the outage on my Wunderground account. I’m almost at the end of my contract so will be switching back to BT. Fed up of having to re sync my station pretty much every day.

Today started with sunshine and was pleasant when I left for church just after 10am. Whilst out for lunch with friends afterwards, there was a sudden sharp shower and it’s now become noticeably cooler. Looking east towards the coast, it looked like they’d got the best of the weather while I was watching lowish cloud move from east to west. Thankfully, we’ve not had any more rain though. High of 18c this morning, now hovering around 14c. Back to work tomorrow after a fortnight off with few outdoor jobs completed that I’d hoped to do, thanks to the rain. I hope the weather improves in August.

Congratulations to you and Mrs Northernlights, hope you enjoyed a wee celebration.

Absolutely heartbreaking! The force behind that tornado to lift two artics and dump them both on a building is beyond believable. I think it must be so much worse for those living in the tornado belts to face these events during the hours of darkness than any of us can ever imagine.

My Youshiko died at the start of February after I replaced the batteries. Not impressed and I'll need to wait until I've got the cash to buy a new station