The arrival of a new year ends Scottish weather warnings issued by the MET Office in the wake of Storm Gerrit.
Two yellow warnings for snow and rain were issued from Saturday, 30 December, until 3pm and midnight.
Heavy snow – expected to be up to 10cm in high areas – delayed flights out of Glasgow Airport and closed part of the A82.
The warnings came just days after Storm Gerrit caused closures, cancellations, and outages that brought much of Scotland to a standstill. Heavy rain and high winds led to severe disruption for holiday travellers, with wind gusts as high as 86 mph reported on the north-east coast.
Major rail routes were closed for safety checks, creating delays and cancellations.
On Wednesday, Scotrail suspended trains to northern Scotland, while damage to overhead wires and flooding on the line led LNER to cancel journeys north of Newcastle. In one incident, a train driver was left “shaken” after a Scotrail train crashed into a fallen tree in Broughty Ferry.
Meanwhile, a major incident was declared on the A9 when the key road closed after drivers were stuck in heavy snow for hours.
Students travelling home for the holidays were affected by the road closures, with one telling The Student that:
“The roads in front and behind the bus flooded, so I’ve been stuck in Huntly for 6 hours. No one knows what’s going on, and it’s frustrating; I don’t know if I can make it for my flight back.”
“I’m close to having a meltdown because the highlands are now effectively isolated from the rest of Scotland.”
Another student praised transport staff, saying:
“Thank you to the bus driver and other transport staff for getting us to Edinburgh safely in such challenging circumstances.”
It took Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Distribution until Saturday to fully restore power to all 48,000 affected. The company’s Operations Director, Andy Smith, said that:
“I would like to say thank you to our customers for their patience while we worked through some particularly challenging conditions to reconnect them as quickly and safely as possible.”
“Wind Damage” by marcusjroberts is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.