As the skies are completely clear though with barely a single cloud to be seen, we should get plenty of sunshine later on at least to begin with, and even the perfect view of this morning's sunrise in a wee while.

Currently around -4°C here in Edinburgh.

(Last week we had -5 on 3 days and a -5.5)

Blackford is in a frost hollow beneath Blackford Hill and tends to be colder than the city on still, clear nights

It's -13 C near Carrbridge but that's not on the official Met Office list. 'Highlands and Islands Weather' have an impressive array of  automatic stations in wild parts of northern Scotland (the Met Office doesn't)

With that, I've even been able to find some data for the botanic gardens in Edinburgh which means that I no longer just have to rely on weatherobs.com for that.

One thing to be careful of though is that if you're filtering by region from the main website at highlandweather.info, the main stations in Edinburgh (such as Edinburgh Gogarbank and the botanic gardens in Edinburgh) actually come under the Lothian region, and not under the separate entry of the City of Edinburgh.

There actually a number of number of stations listed for here in Edinburgh and even two stations in Leith (Leith Docks which is listed under the Lothian Region and Leith itself which is listed under the City of Edinburgh) although a number of those stations including those two stations in Leith don't have enough data for them to make that all that useful.

EDIT:

I've also noticed that the minimum temperature for Edinburgh Gogarbank is shown as -4.8°C which is the lowest hourly temperature reading, and not as the actual figure of -5.0°C which is the actual official minimum temperature as given by the raw SYNOP/BUFR data.

That is therefore something else to be aware of when using the Highlands and Islands Weather site.

The Sun is now shining here in Edinburgh although the temperature is still at around -4°C here.

Min -1.2c

Currently getting cloudier, hazy sunshine 1.7c, frost remains. 

Rather interestingly, the temperature at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh is still at -1.9°C with quite a lot of frost still around although the temperature will no doubt jump up above freezing there as well before too long.

As to rain gauge measurements, according to my official met office observers book, any water in the gauge is to be recorded at 0900GMT and, as well as rain, this can be melted snow, hoar frost, dew or fog moisture. I think hoar frost may be the culprit here, although it wouldn't have melted by 0900 surely? 🤔

As to whats on the ground, the observer should note frost as opposed to snow. Maybe they don't have an option to distinguish?

Thanks for that.

I've often wondered why 0.2 mm of rain sometimes gets recorded at certain times at a particular station even in completely bone dry conditions but you have explained that really well.

Meanwhile and with the sunshine having now disappeared under a veil of high to medium level cloud, the temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank has dropped back below freezing again to -0.1°C as I write. In addition to that, the temperature at the botanic gardens at Edinburgh is still -0.2°C so an ice day is still technically possible there, albeit unlikely because even if the highest hourly reading ends being below freezing, that figure is close enough to freezing to make it very likely that the official maximum temperature for there will still be above freezing.

EDIT:

The temperature at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh is now up to +1.2°C so no ice day there either (as you will have seen from my earlier comments, I wasn't expecting an ice day anyway) and the temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank is also back up above freezing at 0.5°C.

2ND EDIT:

I've also seen that the erroneous snow depth measurement at Edinburgh Gogarbank has even made it onto the main page of the Highlands and Islands Weather site as the highest snow depth in Scotland because there isn't a single location (even on the highest mountains) which currently has any lying snow according to all of the data on there.

That therefore makes that situation at Edinburgh Gogarbank a very isolated case which is quite remarkable. Whilst I'm on the subject of the Highlands and Islands Weather site though, I can see that the temperature at Blair Atholl in Perthshire still hasn't got above -4.2°C today so far which means that it looks as though at least someone will be getting an ice day today.

In addition to that, Michael (Doctormog) and Richard (Richardabdn) from Aberdeen will no doubt both be interested in the fact that the sunniest place in Scotland just now is Dyce in Aberdeenshire with a total of 4.2 hours of sunshine.

4°C in garden at 14.45hrs, with frost persisting on shaded parts of the lawn. Still bright and clear.

Can see it's still below freezing further north and Glasgow. Most of England is well above freezing now

"Severe weather alerts warning of a "significant threat to life" appeared on phones across the UK due to a testing error, the Met Office has said.  Notifications warned of severe weather events including high temperatures, snow, ice and rain in different parts of the country on Thursday. The test alerts, issued by a third party aggregator, were not intended to be seen by the public.

One person on social media shared a screenshot of an alert warning of "severe high temperature" next to the forecast of 4C (39F) in Stockport. The Met Office, which is responsible for weather warnings in the UK, confirmed the test warnings had now been removed."

Met Office 'threat to life' hot weather alerts accidentally sent to phones

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8g3rm51m1o 🤐

Well, most locations further north are below freezing (the coldest place is still Blair Atholl where it hasn't got above -3.9°C all day so far) except that it's a lot milder in the northern Isles and along the west coast with one station in the Shetland Isles currently recording a temperature of around 9°C.

Currently here in Edinburgh, the temperature is around 0°C with the frost having persisted all day.

However, I've looked at the latest Met Office forecast and from that, I can see that tomorrow is forecast to be much milder here with the milder air moving in by the early hours of tomorrow morning.

In those locations which have been below freezing all day up until now, the temperature still has to remain below freezing right up until 9am GMT (09:00 UTC) tomorrow morning at each such location for an official ice day to be recorded there for today.

This means that if the milder air moves in during the early hours of tomorrow morning, it is then unlikely that any ice day will actually be recorded for today even at locations such as Blair Atholl despite the temperatures there being well below freezing all day up until now.

Even to our north, most locations are now above freezing and although there is still at least one location in Perthshire (Blair and Atholl is no longer the coldest location in Scotland) which is still clinging onto a possible ice day for now, that lowest maximum is getting closer to freezing all the time, so an ice day anywhere in Scotland is continuing to become more and more unlikely all the time.

There's a light breeze. FWIW, I don't often comment on the wind as I live in a town house with quite a number of quite tall buildings close by. Even if I go outside, the direction of the wind is often unclear as there are local eddies.

Once again, the temperature profiles haven't been simple enough to allow me to just report the overnight minimum temperatures in the usual manner. Yesterday's minimum temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank was officially -4.5°C but that was recorded just after 9am GMT (09:00 UTC) yesterday morning and the temperatures during the overnight period have been consistently above freezing.

This then leaves us with the peculiar situation in which an official air frost was actually still recorded at all three of my local stations despite the overnight period being completely frost-free.

Yesterday's maximum temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank was 4.5°C but that was recorded only a few hours ago.

Currently, the temperature here in Edinburgh is around 3°C so it's not as mild as I was expecting it to be and the proper mild air is still to our west.

However, I can confirm from Highlands and Islands Weather that there was no ice day in Scotland yesterday. Their summary at the bottom of the page shows the summary from midnight and not the official 9am to 9am summaries which I would typically report on here. However, we still have a wee while to go before we get to 9am this morning and because of that, the fact that the lowest maximum is no longer showing up as being below freezing is enough to confirm that there were no ice days in Scotland yesterday.

It's clear, calm, 3.8, dew 3.1, after a low of -0.7 last night. Yesterday's high was just 5.8.

It looked very seasonal with a group of deer in the sparkling white field out the back. Shame it'll be going mild again for a few days