February incredibly unsettled month as snow falls across Scotland

February continues to be an incredibly volatile and unsettled month between storms and bouts of colder air and snow – unlike the rest of winter, which was fairly quiet and mild.

Overnight, numerous wintry showers have swept across the northern, central and western parts of the country, with several centimetres of snow in some areas.

It’s been one of those very hit or miss scenarios, where the showers line up and this means some spots get a lot of snow while somewhere down the road gets none.

At 10am this morning, Aviemore had 8cm of snow, Strathallan 7cm, Lanark 6cm, Paisley 5cm and Edinburgh 2cm.

This is the heaviest snow many central areas have had so far this winter, which says something about our winters. We all know that we still get spells of heavy snow, such as winter 2010 and the Beast from the East, but the number of days with snow has drastically reduced since the 1980s.

During Thursday, showers will continue to remain frequent and this will lead to several more centimetres of snow in higher areas, along with gusty winds that will lead to blizzard conditions and drifting of lying snow.

At lower levels, the showers should turn more to sleet as the day goes on with slightly less cold air coming in.

Between 5pm and 7pm, a short spell of heavier rain and snow will move south across Argyll and into the central belt, which will bring some awful conditions on the higher parts of the A82, M77, M8, M80 and M74.

At low levels, it’s a lot trickier as the freezing level will have risen slightly, so more likely to be sleety. However, when this gets heavier the freezing level will drop and allow some snow at low levels too.

So while it’s likely to go between sleet and snow on low ground, there’s still likely to be further accumulations in some spots.

The wintry weather eases overnight – with some very low temperatures over snow cover in the Highlands – and many areas will have an icy start to Friday.

But it’s going to be a much sunnier and quieter day. The cold spell is just a brief event with milder weather returning on Saturday, with some rain.