Peregrinator Mark: Flying into Edinburgh just before the snow arrived

On Thanksgiving day I left the DC metro area for Scotland so that I could attend graduation on St Andrews' Day, November 30. I had heard that there would be some snow in Scotland before I left, but I wasn't really expecting a whole lot because it was too early for a heavy snow. Last winter had been the coldest winter in 30 years (albeit, followed by the hottest summer on record). I had missed most of this snow since I went home for Christmas, but I saw the aftermath when I flew back last January. Traveling around had been cumbersome even though the trains and buses had been running for me. My coat and clothes had also been warm enough for me, so I wasn't overly concerned. Even if there was snow in Scotland, St Andrews was so close to the coast that the warmer North Sea waters would melt the snow more quickly than further inland.

As my plane flew from London to Edinburgh, I could see the white terrain. There were still large swaths of green beneath me whereas the ground had been completely white last January when I had flown over the same parts of England and Scotland. Though most of the area surrounding Edinburgh was white, the city itself was brown and green. The taxi driver who took me to my hotel said that the hills around the city changed the weather a little bit and may have kept the area a few degrees warmer so that the previous night's precipitation was just rain. That night my mom said that it was snowing, but the amount of snow on the ground the next morning surprised me. I really wanted to get to the castle so that I could take photos of it in this snow since it's rather rare to get these photos.