Weather data, cams, forecasts and records for Fife, Scotland, UK. Follow me, Graham Smith, for hourly weather updates, pics and more.
@fifeweather
.bsky.social
I'm going to be moving from here to
@bluesky
at some point in the near future and am currently in the process of building my profile over there. You can find me
@fifeweather
.bsky.social if you're there too.
The shockwave from the
#TongaVolcano
eruption has been recorded at my weather station here in
#Fife
! Notice the small jump in the air pressure graph. Just incredible to think of the power that can send a shockwave around the world!
#Tonga
Here's a replay of the lightning activity recorded by the FifeWeather lightning detector in Lochgelly. Strike position is approximate but strike rate is accurate. Pretty impressive, especially around 5am!
@BBCScotWeather
@fifetimes
Side by side comparison of my
#Anstruther
WeatherCam before and after replacing the camera module around midday today. Just a small difference in image quality, don't you think?! 🤓🤣
I raced to grab the camera this morning as I saw the moon sinking behind Benarty Hill. This was the result of a frantic shot taken out the back window of my house - no time for tripod, refinement of settings, etc. Just a shame about those powerlines between us and the hill!
My
#Aberdour
weathercam caught a bonny
#sunrise
this morning over the Forth. Risk of some heavy showers later today and maybe a rumble of thunder. As is often the case in these setups, some areas may see nothing at all. Hope everyone has a great Thursday!
Thanks to
@danholley_
for bringing my attention to the fact there was a second pressure wave (travelling in the opposite direction around the earth) detected from the
#TongaVolcano
#Tongaeruption
by my air pressure sensor in
#Fife
,
#Scotland
, shortly after 2am (blue box).
#Tonga
Couldn't sleep so went up the hill this morning. The moorland dawn chorus, a roe deer and a short eared owl would have been reward enough, but the sunrise took some beating. Insomnia does have its upsides.....sometimes 😉
#Fife
In between the grey skies, there are some beautiful autumn colours to be seen in the trees just now. 🍂🍁
I snapped this in Glenrothes this afternoon. It's nice to be reminded what clear skies look like after the last few days! 😂
I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw wind gusts of this magnitude forecast for
#Fife
, out of a hi-res forecast model. Especially for just 14 hours ahead of the model run! Granted, Arpege can have a tendency to over-cook gust speeds a little but even so! 😲👀
#StormIsha
Before the day gets away from me, I wanted to thank each and every one of you for your follows, retweets, likes, interest, interactions, friendships and fun throughout 2022! It's been a blast! Wishing you all a fantastic New Year when it comes!
My thoughts are with all
#Fife
and Scottish farmers now having to deal with the fallout of the extreme rainfall. 😔 I shudder to think what the cost of damage is, not just £ but also to morale.. must be heartbreaking! I'm ever mindful that these folk put the food on our tables!
Lochgelly has had a few centimetres of snow this morning. Looking very festive and pretty but the roads will demand respect this morning! ☃️🎄🎅
#uksnow
KY5 3/10
I'm absolutely delighted and humbled to discover I've recently broken through the 4K followers mark!🎉🎊 I never imagined that I'd reach this many folk when I started tweeting 13 years ago.
Thanks to each and every one of you. You really are truly appreciated!
Reflecting on 2021, I just wanted to say a MASSIVE thank you to every one of YOU, my fantastic followers! Without you, I'd be talking to myself, feeling very unfulfilled! 😂 So thank you.. I truly value every single one of you and your interest in what I do!! 🙏😍
I decided to hit the hills today to blow out the cobwebs. An absolutely sublime day atop Benarty Hill, with a dome of blue sky and light winds. Loads of folk, families and four-legged friends on the hills, with a great atmosphere!
@ffpdebbie
An incredible amount of lightning to! This is my lightning detector before it died due to a power blip about an hour ago. Each dot is a strike! 😲😲
This time lapse from Sunday Night/Monday morning was taken from my new WeatherCam just above Upper Largo, looking West towards Leven and central Fife. Its light sensitivity is incredible and I loved the way it captured the movement of the stars. Hope you enjoy!
You may have noticed the format I tweet my hourly observations has been updated to (hopefully) be a little more easy on the eye. I've attached an annotated graphic of the new format for reference too. Just shout if you have any questions/suggestions!
Live playback of this afternoon's lightning strikes from 4pm until the FifeWeather lightning detector lost power due to mains failure. This is sped up 256 times.
Take note folks - A RED weather warning for wind issued by the
@metoffice
for eastern Fife. This is somewhat historic. I've never seen a red wind warning for parts of Fife before!
Here's a clever probability tracker from
@TWOweather
which is being updated as new forecast model runs complete. It shows the probability of a record breaking heatwave event occuring in the UK on Mon/Tues.
Today I spent the day at Forth House Caravan Park above Upper Largo, fitting a new WeatherCam and weather station. Both will be online early next week, but I wanted to share these first pics out of the new HD Weathercam of tonights sunset.. 😍
I just wanted to take the chance before tomorrow to wish all my friends/followers a very Merry Christmas! 🎄🎅☃️ Here's hoping everyone has a great day tomorrow, however you celebrate.
The max wind speeds recorded universally across the country over the past 24 hours are pretty staggering. For
#Fife
, the official
@metoffice
station at
#leuchars
recorded 80mph gusts (128km/h). (Note these charts are in km/h.)
Here's the latest
@WQRadar
rain radar loop showing the thundery rain (heavy in parts!) moving north eastwards across much of
#Fife
just now, with a bulk of it developing as it goes.
The worst of the winds for Fife are forecast from now until mid-morning when they will slowly start to ease a bit into the afternoon (although still staying very blustery!).
This month is now the wettest May since my station records began in 2006 (and there's still plenty of May left!). 🦆🦆
#nosurprise
The good news is, pressure looks set to build towards end of May so a glimmer of hope on the horizon for better weather in early June.
Having had a rare work-free day today, I decided to hike the ~10 mile loop of the West Fife Woodland Way. What a fantastic loop it was too - loads to see along the way and some lovely scenery! I'd highly recommend it if you're craving some outdoor time.
Some lightning captured on my Lochgelly weathercam last night. Incredible that it caught these, given that it only stores an image every 15 seconds! Shows how frequent the lightning was at times.
Here's a time-lapse replay of my lightning detector from early this morning. The spike in lightning strike-rate around 5am coincides with reports of thundersnow from around
#Fife
@C_MAlexander
Good morning fellow Fifers. A beautiful autumn day ahead after a cool start, with light winds, plenty of sunshine for most and temps reaching mid to high teens. A top start to the weekend! Have a great one! 👍☀️
@LeoHickman
Ironic that the climate sceptics are having to doctor facts/reality to peddle their misinformation when that is the very thing they are accusing the scientific community/media of! A great thread revealing their hypocrisy and disinformation!
I'm honoured to be featured in this weekend's
@thecourieruk
with my thoughts on our changing climate and some background info on the recent spate of
#nacreousclouds
seen over
#Fife
.
Thanks to
@C_MAlexander
for the great write-up:
"Rain, rain, go to Spain..." well not quite, instead the North Sea is getting all the runoff from the recent floods (left: 14 Oct; right: 22 Oct 2023)
#NASA
Terra/MODIS
Quite a busy display on the lightning detector just now! Not much locally but the SW of England area having a grand old time of it with thunderstorms! I'm maybe just a bit envious. 😂
Today has broken my station's maximum September temperature record already, with 23.3° recorded a few moments ago. The previous station record was set in September 2016 at 22.7°. My station records began in 2006.
Here's a zoomed time-lapse video of the massive GPO Sapphire heavy lifting ship arriving off of
#Burntisland
on Friday morning right up until it's enveloped by the haar. Taken from my Aberdour weathercam.
@courier_fife
@MarineTraffic
@fleetmon
[Sat 13:00] Aboyne in Aberdeenshire has recorded 300% of its average October rainfall. It's the wettest October on record there and the wettest of any month ever recorded there. The East of Scotland as a whole is sitting at 191% of its normal October rainfall, with more to come.
Atmospheric conditions over the north sea are allowing VHF radio signals to propagate abnormally far just now, and my AIS station is receiving positions from vessels hundreds of miles away. This is known as VHF "ducting".
@MarineTraffic
@fleetmon
In my 13 years of observing weather in Fife, I've never seen lightning like we've had over the Kingdom this evening so far. This is the console display of my lightning detector (the gap in the graph is when the mains power tripped and took down the detector PC).
Incredible to see the water level so high in Loch Leven first hand. It was literally lapping over the pier in Kinross! Hat tip to
@juliemcd1999
for alerting me to this!
Scotland currently holding the record for the max gust speed from
#StormIsha
, with Aonach Mor recording a gust of 90mph (145 km/h). I've no doubt this record will fall again in the coming hours...
A wonderfully clear 22° sun halo appeared on my morning walk. This optical phenomena is caused by the sunlight passing through tiny hexagonal ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. A rare treat for weather geeks like me 😍😂
The plus side of being a weather geek is having thermometers pretty much everywhere.. the down side is going to bed in the knowledge the bedroom is still >31°C, where it stayed for most of the night! 🥵🌡️ I apologise in advance if I'm incoherent at times today. 😴🤣😂
Here's a time-lapse from my lightning detector in Lochgelly Fife during the peak of last night's storm (peak occurs at 22:49). An incredible peak strike rate of 443 strikes/minute!
@SeanBattySTV
@JudithRalston
@BBCScotWeather
At last! This glorious and calm weather allowed me to repair the mast mounts yesterday. I'm knackered (lost count of the trips up/down the ladder) but on the plus side, wind speeds are finally back to normal! 😃
Another absolutely fantastic
@fifewhiskyfest
! Huge shout out to
@kaskwhisky
and
@angelshareglass
for hosting such a brilliant, well organised and enjoyable event! I'll be back again next year for sure. I also picked up a bottle of
@KingsbarnsDist
Doocot new release! Lovely!❤️👍
The
@metoffice
have just updated the Amber warnings, to consolidate Scotland under one Amber (previously two Amber zones intersected
#Fife
). Here’s the updated warning verbiage. It’s a while since I’ve seen wind speeds like these mentioned in a met office wind warning!
#StormIsha
Check out this morning's sunrise from the new FifeWeather Weathercam at
#Kinghorn
This is the first of many time-lapses to come from this wonderful view. The live weathercam can be viewed here ➡
Here's a larger scaled map - each dot represents a lightning strike detected. As it's a single lightning detector, the range and bearing are only approximate but the sheer quantity/strike rate is telling!
Incoming.. what an incredible looking
#StormAgnes
. Going to get a tad blowy and wet later this afternoon into the evening, with a yellow
@metoffice
warning for wind, covering much of the UK including
#Fife
I'm really interested to see what sort of wind speeds my East Fife weather station records tonight. Whilst it's only elevated to ~3.5m, it's VERY exposed to the SW. It's an ultrasonic wind sensor (no moving parts), so it's very good at reacting to gusts (no inertia to overcome).
Sorry for the lack of updates folks, but my
@Plusnet
internet is down at FifeWeather HQ in Lochgelly. Anybody else having broadband issues in
#Fife
this morning? Died at 4:07am, no doubt storm related.
For another project (TBA) in collaboration with the very talented
@jwheare
, we had a need to generate a montage of pics from weathercams each day. I think these look great and give an overview of the day's weather. These are yesterday's. What do you think, keep posting these??
Pan Ha, Dysart at sunrise this morning. Scotland is such a beautiful country, I’m so lucky to be able to travel but even luckier to call this country home.
With potential storms forecast for this afternoon, I've put up a real-time live stream of my lightning detector's console so you can watch in real time!
Here’s the
@WQRadar
radar loop of this afternoons storm activity over
#Fife
so far. The small cell responsible for the funnel cloud spotted over
#Glenrothes
and
#Leslie
, can be seen developing into the pink/white area.
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