>This morning is one of those rare mornings where an outside temperature of 31 degrees displays NO frost, yet I’ve seen on more days than not where a reading that hits 32, we get frost and sometimes very thick frosts. It is pretty rare for this part of the world to hit freezing and not have frost….

Thank yesterday’s vigourous northeast wind which roared across the North Sea fast enough that is did not collect much moisture off the North Sea and because the very air mass originates in an environment well away from a moisture source such as the Atlantic, North Sea etc, then the air itself is very dry and almost absent of moisture. Therefore we have an air mass that’s come from an interior, such as Russia. The USA gets their bitter cold from Canada where again thousands of miles away from an ocean and the air is the driest of all air masses. When it snowed in New Jersey back in January, it was wet and sloppy, but then once an Arctic high poressure system pushes in, the snow itself dried out, and the next day, it was like powder. The actual air dried the snow enough, that is blew across the road as a stiff sub-zero wind shivered us to the core.

Today Scotland is experiencing a continental air mass with little moisture. We need moisture to form frost and many mornings during my winter visits to the USA when Canadian-continent air mass come down, not a blade of grass has frost on it, yet the temperatre could be down to 4 degrees!

Our small size and such close proximity to water and fairly mild water, it’s difficult for even continental (Scandinavian or Siberian Highs) to move across Britain and not collect some moisture on it’s journey across the Baltic Sea or North Sea. The flow must have been strong enough to cross the North Sea from Norway and have little time to feed moisture it’s it’s wind flow. In saying that, a strong north wind tends to be a drying out wind also…

We did still have a brisk wind blowing at 5am this morning and until that wind started to settle down, our temperature remained above freezing… Around 7-8am prior to sunrise the temp here at the house fell below 32 degrees and actually bottomed a 31 degrees just as the sun rose above the horizon…

Today I expect a limited amount of warming, perhaps a high around 38 degrees today and tonight the low could fall to the lowest levels so far as there is no wind and no cloud to hold heat at the surface. As soon as the sun drops this evening, the cooling and release of heat to space can begin. Some areas of Highland Scotland could see lows run towards 14 degrees or -10C. Here I am calling for a low down to around 22 degrees…

Thanks for reading.
-Mark