Haven’t been able to do this in socks since last year 😆The doorstep hasn’t been completely dry since 31st December!

Genuinely makes me sad to see them 😭 Every year 😆

One day. Blink and you’ll miss it. The whole of Scotland will head outdoors on Saturday, in a massive expression of pent-up hillwalking/walking/cycling urges that have (depending on where you live) been effectively suppressed for the best part of a month 😉 I FOR ONE CANNOT WAIT!!! 😱😱😱😱☀️☀️☀️😎😎😎☃️☃️☃️😆😆😆

There has been 79 Februaries at #London Heathrow weather station. And 5 of the top 7 wettest have occurred within last 20 years. Late winter is not what it used to be, until 1991-2020 averages Feb was the driest month of year on average #climate

Strange celestial phenomenon spotted today.....is it a portent of some kind?

Does anyone know what the UK record for consecutive wet days is?

Nice to be up in the snow though.....even if it was sopping wet 😉

Sopping wet post-holing up Carn nan Sgliat this afternoon. I only ever seem to do this hill when it's like this i.e. too unpleasant to head high, and so looking for something more challenging than Creag Choinnich, but not something that's going to be tooooo much of a slog. Just enough post-holing 😆

Yesterday......blue sky for all of 3 minutes. Today......ACTUAL SUNSHINE!!! 😲 For all of 7 minutes 😆

This feels a lifetime ago. The last time there was a properly sunny day here.

There are, admittedly, worse places to weather this kind of weather than here but ENOUGH ALREADY!!! 😫☁️💧 Easily the gloomiest, greyest, dampest run of weather in years. We definitely had about ten minutes of sunshine on 28th January, but that was the first we'd seen the sun since ooo, 18th January?

WTAF!!! 😲

Settled down to finish Season 6 of The Expanse this evening. Episode 6 ended and then……nothing! How can it just end like that? Why aren’t there four more episodes!?!? 😱😭😱

The last time my daily rainfall graph looked like this was…….9th January!

Cold, wet and dull in Worcestershire. Perfect weather to be sat by pub fires 🙂 Two pubs today, and really lovely to make another trip to the beautiful 15th Century Fleece Inn. You can well imagine the front street looking exactly the same, centuries ago.

Another toilet change at Corrour Bothy in the #Cairngorms. Heavy going in the snow, especially with one MO jet-lagged and one just old, but, hey, you take the good with the not so good.

It's @walkhighlands.co.uk time! And in my latest column I'm taking a closer look at the weirdness that is Fata Morgana. I've only seen this bizarre mirage a couple of times, and this particular sighting was on 27th December on Carn na Drochaide. My brain hurts after writing it though! 😆

Nice sign on a bench today....but kinda baffled that it's even needed 🤔 Thankfully everybody (and there were A LOT of people out in the soggy cloud today), bar one person, did say hi. Presumably they'd seen the sign too 😆

It was a 'bracing' walk along the Malverns this morning from British Camp to Worcs Beacon and back 😆 Got soaked on one side of me walking the north, and the other side walking south 😆 Just what I needed though after a week in the office, a 450 mile drive and barely having moved my legs in 2wks!

The Cairnwell, yesterday morning 😀 I can't wait to get out and about on those hills next week!!

Another 10mm of rain since midnight. It’s crazy how casually these amounts have been falling lately. There were whole months last year when we didn’t even get 10mm!

Oh my word, look! 👀I genuinely can’t remember the last time we had sunshine. 9 days ago I think? Maybe 10?

25mm of sopping wet snow today and counting. 103mm in the past 7 days. And we're on the drier side of this easterly deluge! Assuming anything up high can stick to anything in the 100mph wind, there should be shedloads of the stuff on leeward aspects.

Naturally 😉😋🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

'Widely difficult conditions - stability and mobility likely only achieved with crouching/crawling'. Hmm, Tuesday sounds a nice day to be out on the hill 🤔😆

The state of the snow line on Morrone, above Braemar. Old stuff hanging on but current level is around 700m.

Good god, there's open sky! First we've had since Monday!!

Judging by recent forecast modelling, increasingly likely that some southern & western parts of the UK & perhaps eastern Ireland record a top 3 wettest January on record.

#aurora east lothian 2055GMT til 2115 a lot going on, even with pesky cloud near the coast

For a moment this evening we were largely cloud-free 🙂 Cloud has now obscured the whole sky, but for a moment it was definitely one of the more 'see-able' auroras in recent years 👍 It was very bright outside, like moonlight.

And to finish, the view across to Braemar and up Glen Clunie this afternoon.

Nice shapes and patterns under these conditions 🙂

Started bright today before clouding over. Very calm again up high, so a nice benign jaunt before lunch 🙂

The view into the Cairngorms from Carn na Drochaide today. It's not been one of those super-mild thaws, thankfully, so there is still good cover higher up. An excellent primer for any heavy falls to come.....but need to get through Tues/Weds first 😬

"The Dead Marshes. Yes, yes that is their name"

Just over half of January gone and it's currently tracking as the coldest January of my dataset! It'll be interesting to see how things pans out if....IF.....the final week of the month runs cold.

High of 5C and rain to high levels in Braemar today, so unsurprisingly the snow line is creeping up the hillsides again 🙄

Rare flashes of colour among the pines on Saturday, and then as the light was fading the hills took on that lovely, completely flat chalk-white appearance.

The recovering mixed woodland in Glen Quoich the other day. The winter monochrome really highlights how many wee trees are reclaiming the forest's lost ground.

I'M MELTING! MEEEEEEEELTING!!!! 🧙‍♀️🫠 Big difference on the Dee at Mar Lodge, between the weekend and today. I hate seeing all that liquid snow disappearing down the glen 🙈😫

5C now, lashing with rain. It's really horrid out there now, all damp and slushy. Just 3 days ago it was perfection!

Crikey. Time for the big coat! 🥶

4.1C now. That's the warmest it's been since 31st December.

I've been out today in a 2WD with winter tyres, a 4x4 without winter tyres, and an ATV. None of them are coping with the thaw. I really hate this inbetween 'filth' stage 🙈😫

A much flatter light today. The occasional tease of sunshine but generally it was more of a monochromatic experience - a complete contrast to the luminosity and colour of Thursday but no less beautiful for it. There's always something very atmospheric on days like this 🙂

Today was the last chance to get out in the snow (at lower levels at least) before it all goes wet and misty and horrid.

5cm of snow this AM in the Lomond Hills 🙂 It's been ages since the hills looked properly wintry, as the last few years (while offering a few days with a cm or two) have been poor for anything more than that. A far cry from Winter 20/21 when it just kept accumulating and we had 44 days of lying snow!

Just a taste of the almost Nordic-like beauty on offer here on Deeside yesterday. It really doesn't get better than this in Scotland 🙂 Well.....not any more anyway 😉

This caught my attention yesterday morning, where the Clunie meets the Dee. A big diamond of ice, gently floating downstream.

The things you see in the Linn of Dee car park when no visitors can get there and it's absolutely quiet 😉