A Winter Light Show

In late December there was a wonderful display of Nacreous Cloud in the skies over Aberdeenshire.  From before sunrise the ethereal colours and effects were evident and continued to varying degrees all day.

Nacreous (mother of pearl) clouds need really specific conditions and are consequently rare phenomena:  the cloud needs to be very high at 10-20 miles above the earth's surface, the air at that height needs to be very cold (below -80 degrees Celsius) and a very low sun angle.  They're also known as Polar Stratospheric Cloud (PSC) and the particular ice crystals forming the clouds refract the low sun at an angle down to earth.  Because of these specific conditions, nacreous clouds are usually only seen in northern polar regions in winter, or when the polar upper atmosphere vortex sinks south, which was what gave rise to this lovely display.

The ice crystals in Nacreous clouds are smaller than those in lower cloud types and can often be composed of atoms of nitric acid and water ice - this combination can combine to release chlorine atoms, so they're not entirely good things!

That said, as the sun began to set in mid-afternoon the colours of the clouds intensified and the shapes changed...it was a captivating sight.

 The most intense colours happened well after sunset when the clouds were still being lit by the sun which had left the surface and was shining at just the right angle - simply stunning!

A white world

Over a week of heavy snow has left much of Scotland under a thick blanket of snow.  Here in Aberdeenshire we've measured an even cover of 54cms/21 inches, mostly unconsolidated as the temperatures have been so low.  

The drifting has been quite spectacular on higher routes and even at lower levels the quantity is remarkable.  This part of Scotland is one of the snowiest, and February has a reputation as a snowy month but the present amounts are unmatched for ten years.  Mobility has become a challenge....

...unless of course you can adapt your mode of mobility! The quality of light in the very low temperatures, particularly around sunset,  has been really special.

The night of 10-11 February was exceptionally cold.  Just after daylight we registered -21.4 Celsius on our weather station and nearby Braemar recorded -23C.  This makes it the coldest February temperature since 1965, and the lowest temperature of any night since 1995.  To put it into context, -21C is four degrees colder than the inside a domestic freezer!

Stepping outside in the morning was to step into a gripping chill.  Fingers exposed for more than a few seconds became painful and unresponsive.  Many vehicles wouldn't run because the winter engine coolant which is commonly used here may not be quite extreme enough, or because diesel fuel has become waxy. 

Image courtesy of Alastair Murray

Extreme as the cold has been, it's so beautiful.  The frost has been so intense that the crystals are the size of small postage stamps, panes of crystal brilliance.  Trees have become works of art in this white world.

Look carefully and there's beauty everywhere; a strand of barbed wire on a fence has become a twisting string of the most delicate crystals.

The frosted stems of last year's Rosebay Willowherb are now a piece of abstract art.

At the edge of the River Don, the white world seemed even more intense, the air completely frigid to the point that any exertion caused the throat to burn as cold air was inhaled.  Here the trees were frosted to a depth I've not previously encountered, it was like white fur.

Ice floes have formed on the sides of the river and the water itself has partially frozen, a rare sight in Scotland.

 The fields which in late summer are a golden bounty of ripe barley have become white sheets of deep powder snow; crossed with the evidence of animals which normally would go unnoticed. Many folk here own XC skis and we've had more use out of them in the last 20 days than perhaps in the last 20 years! The opportunity to ski right from the front door and make long tours has been most unusual.

The build-up of snow may have reached a peak and the extreme temperatures are due to moderate over the coming days.  The conditions are certainly causing difficulty for many, but this white world is certainly dazzlingly beautiful.

One good thing - a winter glory

It was a very cold day here in Aberdeenshire.  The snow has gone from the low ground to be replaced by hard ice, the snow on the higher ground continues to build.  Freezing fog in the morning began to lift at lunchtime as I headed out for a walk; my timing was incredibly lucky.

The last tendrils of fog were dispersing and with my back to the sun an ethereal phenomenon appeared, just at the edge of vision.  A fogbow is an uncommon optical effect, similar to a rainbow but with the sunlight acting on mist rather than water droplets.  It appears as a pale arc and is just so beautiful.

The effect didn't last long before beginning to dissipate.  I've seen fogbows just a few times - the last during a crossing of the Sound of Gigha with my friend Douglas on another day of fragile beauty.

 The evening light was just lovely; a quiet, delicate pink which gradually faded to indigo and then deep inky black, studded with stars.

During the lockdown of 2020 I looked for "One Good Thing" to offset the tragedy of the Coronavirus pandemic.  We enter 2021 in a similar lockdown and maybe I'd thought that it would be more difficult to find natural beauty in winter.....I was so very wrong.

One good thing - 22nd April 2020

The sky overnight 21st to 22nd April was something really special.  A bright but breezy day turned to a still, clear evening.  Two hours after sunset and with a frost setting in there was still plenty of light on the western horizon.  I rigged a camera on a tripod set to manual focus, wide aperture and exposures of 5 seconds in the hope of giving an impression of what the eye could see.

Somewhat later the light had receded and the night sky had developed into a wonder of pin-sharp stars, and one very bright plant - Venus.

At 2300 Venus was so bright that it was casting a shadow; it's the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon and a fascinating planet - its brilliance due to the reflective quality of the toxic cloud cover - and a planet where a day is longer than a year.

We saw a number of satellites crossing the sky and several of the Lyrid meteor shower before finally and reluctantly coming inside some time after midnight.  Most of the evening had been spent just absorbing the brilliance, clarity and enormity of a night sky - there are times when the sheer majesty of it is almost overwhelming.

One good thing - 21st April 2020

Yesterday's "one good thing" was all about water and the clarity of the river Don, today it was all about the sky.

We spent the late evening of 20th April outside trying to spot some of the shooting stars from the Lyrid Meteor Shower, and also watching the satellites of the Starlink constellation as they passed high to the south west in line astern.  It was a beautifully clear night with no moon....

...and quite different by early morning with a thick mist subduing the colours.  But slowly, the disc of the sun appeared as a faint glow, the mist gained a bright tension......

...before dissipating as if it had never been.  As soon as the sun hit the grass several Skylarks took off with an outpouring of song.

From dense mist to intense blue cloudless sky had taken less than twenty minutes.  High pressure and an easterly airstream have given these very dry and cloudless conditions for a week over the northeast of Scotland, intensely blue sky and brittle-bright light - it's a joy.

One good thing - 8th April 2020

The full moon of  the night of 7th-8th April was termed a "pink super moon".  The super moon part is because the moon is within 90% of perigee - the closest approach to earth of its orbital path- and therefore the full moon would appear to be larger and brighter than the average full moon. In fact the moon is 40,000km closer to the earth than at average orbit, and this was the closest "super moon" of 2020.

The "pink" term refers not to the colour of the moon but is a name given by native American peoples to the April full moon, which occurs at the same time as the flowers of Moss Pink (Phlox subulata) bloom on the plains of central and eastern North America.

Over Aberdeenshire high cloud built during the evening but there were some nice views as the brilliance of the moon created a rainbow corona as it shone through.

2020 will also see a "blue moon" on 31st October when there will be two full moons in the month (and so 13 full moons in a calendar year) - an event uncommon enough to be "once in a blue moon".

Smoke on the water

You certainly won't find a casino on the shoreline, or a stylish town, but in the right conditions you may get to see "smoke on the water" at Slattadale on the shore of Loch Maree.  Lorna, Allan and I drove from Gairloch to Slattadale for a second day of paddling in what we hoped would be superb autumn conditions.

Slattadale catches the morning sunshine, which was melting away the frost of a cold night.  As the water was retaining some of summer's warmth and was several degrees warmer than the air, conditions were right for the particular sort of mist known as "frost smoke". 

Although strictly speaking the term describes frozen water vapour over the sea, sharply cold air over the fresh water of Loch Maree was producing a similar effect.  Beautiful and ethereal, the mist dissipated as soon as it was touched by the morning sun.






Autumn was everywhere; bright "hips" on a wild rose bush glowed like beacons, frost on the branches melting to silvered droplets of water.

Over all, the impressive presence of Slioch dominates the far end of the loch.  Although the mountain seems close by, it's over 12 kilometres away.

When we got onto the water and paddled away from the shore, the view behind us was of stunning autumnal colour...the purple "bloom" of birches which had already shed their leaves, the green of spruces and the dazzling gold of larches; it was going to be a great day......

Pale beauty

It's been a weekend of pale beauty here in the northeast of Scotland.  Driving towards Banchory we were in atmospheric mist with shafts of sunlight streaming through the trees - and I hadn't brought a camera!  We stopped on the road which drops from Queen's View towards Coull where there's a wide sweep of the Dee valley below.  A photo on a mobile phone gives an impression of the almost ghostly quality of light.  Beyond the Dee the easternmost of the Munros, Mount Keen, was prominent as a dome of brilliant white against the pale blue of the winter sky.

On Sunday evening I took a walk around the local area and was returning home as the moon rose above the farmland.  Initially a shade of golden yellow, it rapidly became a disc of pale beauty as it cleared the frost haze; the temperature plummeted below freezing and continued down to minus 6 Celsius.  This full moon was a bit of a special one too....

I was up and about before 5am in order to catch a flight for work - but also to try and catch something of the lunar eclipse which reached totality at 0512.  Given the catchy title of a "super blood wolf moon" because the moon was at perigee (closest to earth and so appearing 7% larger than normal), the blood term from the expected reddish colour and "wolf moon" is a name for a January full moon.

The eclipse was so total that the moon appeared for a while as a dark disc - and my camera simply wouldn't focus on it; the image is included here to show the extraordinary colour.  The difference between the conditions during this eclipse and the very special solstice lunar eclipse in December 2010 was amazing - the ambient light from the snow covered landscape on that occasion must have made quite a difference. 

In any case, my images this time mostly showed nothing but a blur of reddish-brown at totality.  What I actually observed was a disc of deep brown with a reddish edge all round - it was incredibly beautiful.

Gradually the terminator (I love some of the astronomical terms!) crept down and allowed pale light to flood around a portion of the moon, just as a haze of cloud arrived and softened the light.

A post of rather dodgy photos, but hopefully conveying something of the pale beauty of this winter weekend.

A "once in a blue moon" night

Lunacy - intermittent insanity, formerly believed to be related to phases of the moon. 
 

The night of 31st January saw a "supermoon", the third in a series of full moon events where the moon would be at a comparatively close distance from the earth. It was also a "blue moon" - the second full moon in a calendar month, which as the saying goes, doesn't come around that often.  Predicted to appear 7% larger and be 15% brighter than an average full moon, it seemed like a good idea to try and experience it to best advantage.

We are fortunate in having very little light pollution at home, so it there might be a good view, but how about getting up into the hills to see the effect amongst winter mountains?

I set out from Crathie on Deeside at sunset, aiming to spend a night out and get the best possible view.








Emerging form the forest onto the open hill well after sunset, I thought that maybe I'd made a mistake.  A snowstorm came sweeping in from the north west and made for some fairly brisk conditions on the walk in.

My destination for the night was Gelder Shiel bothy on the Balmoral estate.  I'd noted fresh bootprints on the track and so was expecting to find somebody else in residence, and so it proved.  Mike and his dog "Sheba" had arrived just before dark and had the stove lit and the place nice and warm.

I've used Gelder Shiel several times; my abiding memories are of a very cold stone building, but a recent renovation by the MBA and the "Ballater Chiels" has transformed it into one of the best of bothies, cosy and warm.  Once settled into the bothy, I took a look outside....

...where the cloud had broken up and the full moon was sailing high in a ragged sky, almost stroboscopic as the cloud alternately obscured and cleared.

In the small wood surrounding the bothy the effect was all light and shade, a zebra pattern on the fresh snow.

Mike and I took a walk up the track above the bothy.  When the cloud cleared, the light levels were truly astounding, our shadows sharply delineated.

All the images in this post were taken on a compact camera with the flash switched out, the light levels really were as portrayed.  Behind Mike and Sheba is Lochnagar, the cliffs floodlit with brilliant light.

Moonlight is often described as "silver", but this went beyond that - it was arc-light bright.  Every feature in the landscape was picked out sharp and clear - an utterly brilliant night to be out.

The contrast between moonlight and shade was as marked as that between sunlight and shadow.

Bright it may have been, but it was also searingly cold in a strong northerly wind.  We three returned to the bothy and banked up the wood-burner.

I took a walk out just before getting into the sleeping bag, there was a corona around the moon formed by ice crystals in the lower atmosphere.

As the moon moved across the sky it shone through the skylights in the bothy.  A brief turn out in the small hours to answer a call of nature had me diving back for the camera - the bothy washed by light.

I had to leave early to be home and do a day's work.  All night the wind had roared around the building, making some weird noises as the gusts built.  I headed out into what would normally have been pitch blackness, but on this morning was still lit by a super supermoon.  Truly this had been a "once in a blue moon night".

By the time I reached home just after dawn, the day had turned very nasty - a northerly gale and stinging showers rattled in as February roared in.  But what a great night it had been.....

A Supermoon morning

The full moon of 3rd December was a "supermoon", the only one of 2017. A supermoon occurs when the moon's elliptical orbit brings it to the closest point (perigee) of an elliptical orbit. At perigee, the full moon can appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a "regular" full moon.  The night had been clear and certainly well illuminated, but perhaps the most striking view we got was when the moon was setting beyond the hills behind our house.

The proximity to ground objects made the moon seem even larger as it appeared to rest in the crowns of a stand of larch trees, we could clearly see the movement as it passed the trees to drop below the ridge at 0748.  Shining through a corona in the cold air close to the ground in a beautiful wash of light, it was quite a spectacular, if perhaps not quite as stunning as the "blood moon" during the lunar eclipse on the winter solstice of  2010 - what a sight that was!
 

Meanwhile, at our backs the eastern sky was washed with pre-dawn pinks and golds.  What a super supermoon morning, another virtuoso natural performance!