The Met Office has announced an upgraded amber alert and also extended it to Tayside, covering Dundee, Angus and Fife, with more blizzards forecast.
Sunday’s outlook for Scotland after four new weather warnings were issued(Image: Met Office)
Scotland will be engulfed in even more snow this weekend as the Met Office upgraded its weather warning for snow and ice to amber, with severe wintry conditions covering more parts of the country. It has just been the north and north-east which has been badly impacted by blizzards, with some rural communities cut off for days due to drifting snow.
But now it will be a second weekend of freezing temperatures as 2026 doesn’t let up and winter continues with a vengeance. Forecasters have put out the alert from 3am on Sunday morning, and also extended it up most of Scotland into Tayside, Fife and Angus, until 2pm on Sunday.
Several yellow warnings for snow, wind and rain cover much of the rest of the country, with the likes of Glasgow and Edinburgh set to miss out on snow again. But roads and railways may be disrupted in the north, and people could get injured from falls on icy surfaces.
The Met Office said: “A band of snow will move across the warning area during Sunday morning and early afternoon. Snow is expected to fall to low levels across the warning area during the morning before becoming increasingly confined to higher ground in the afternoon.
“Two to five cm is likely to low levels, with 10-15 cm above 150 metres elevation and locally 20-30 cm above 300 metres elevation. Strong winds will lead to some drifting of the snow and blizzard conditions, with deep drifts possible. During the afternoon, snow is likely to turn to sleet and then rain before it clears which will help to melt some of the snow at lower elevations, increasing the risk of flooding.”
In Scotland, snow has been falling thick and fast all week, with 27cm at Altnaharra in Sutherland, 26cm at Loch Glascarnoch and 22cm at Durris in Kincardineshire. Some villages have been trapped, with locals living in locations in Aberdeenshire reporting being stuck in their homes.
Scotland has been hit with more weather warnings including an amber alert for snow(Image: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
A yellow warning for snow and ice is in place until 3pm on Saturday, with further snowfall possible across parts of northern England and much of Scotland, while a widespread risk of ice is expected to cause disruption. Within the alert area, between 2-5cm of snow is likely to accumulate on hills above 100m with up to 15cm possible in areas above 300m in parts of central and eastern Scotland.
Schools in some of the most impacted areas have been shut all week, with more than 250 remaining closed on Friday, including more than 150 in Aberdeenshire, dozens in the Highlands and Aberdeen, and a number in Moray. It means many pupils will have had a whole week off school at the start of a new term.
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The Scottish Government, police, local authorities and other groups are due to meet later to discuss the response to the upgraded weather alert. The SNP Executive has been criticised this week for being too slow in helping rural communities who have been trapped with a lack of gritters and equipment.
Scotland’s justice secretary Angela Constance said: “As we enter a second consecutive weekend of weather warnings with continued snowfall and cold conditions forecast, I appreciate parts of Scotland are still not back to normal. While progress on recovery by partners continues at pace, I again want to thank the public for their patience and understanding that full recovery takes time.”
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