File:Snow in the United Kingdom (MODIS 2024-01-20).jpg

English: An Arctic blast brought frigid temperatures and snow across part of the United Kingdom in mid-February 2024.

On January 14, the Met Office issued yellow weather warnings for ice and snow, which were expected to be most severe for northern Scotland (Aberdeenshire, the Highlands, Orkney, and Shetland Islands) as well as Northern Ireland, including counties Tyrone and Londonderry. A yellow weather warning indicates some disruption is expected from the weather event.

The wicked weather created severe disruptions in Scotland, where temperatures dropped to -13°C (8.6°F) at Dalwhinnie in the Highlands on the night of January 16. Heavy snow and finger-freezing cold caused more than 25,000 children to stay home as more than 200 schools and nurseries closed, either partially or completely. Heavy snow accumulation with bitter wind gusts triggered numerous traffic accidents. By January 18, in the face of continuing snow, the Orkney Local Emergency Co-ordination Group (OLECG) warned that almost all roads were “impassable” and urged drivers to stay at home. Schools in the region have been closed for five days.

Despite the challenging conditions, many residents made the best of it. Residents in Inverurie, a town in northeast Scotland, decided to see if they could host Scotland’s largest snowball fight. According to media reports, after substantial snow continued to fall, a call to meet up came via social media—and hundreds of neighbors are said to have responded. Photos show massive nighttime snowball combat in the floodlights of the local sports center.

On January 17, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a false-color image of snow across the United Kingdom. In this type of image, snow appears bright blue, vegetation is electric green, water looks dark blue. Cloud usually appears white, but high, cold clouds carrying ice crystals may be tinted bright blue.

When the image was acquired, snow covered all the highest elevations of England, Wales, and Scotland, but part of Northern Ireland and all of Scotland were blanketed in widespread snow. Several very cold clouds hovered over far north Northern Ireland as well as northern Scotland, indicating that snowfall continued in those locations.