We have the most amazing weather up here on Shetland. Stunning crisp winter days, still summer evenings when the sea is mirror-flat and the midges eat you alive when you step outside the door. Amazing storms, lashing the sea into white fury and blowing you off your feet. And then we get fog.
Fog in Shetland comes in several distinct types. You’ve got the localised type – Gulberfog as we call it. You can be buried in fog in Gulberwick while just over the hill in Lerwick it’s bright sunshine. You get the half-island type – normally the fog sits on the east coast and by the time you’re over the hill to Scalloway or anywhere else on the west side, it’s clear and lovely. And then you get the all-island blanket. That’s what we’re sat under now.
HIAL’s (Highlands and Islands Airports Limited) website makes for depressing reading this morning – delayed, delayed, delayed, turned round and gave up, delayed… And we’re supposed to be on a flight out tomorrow. A quick check of the Met Office’s predictions shows that the wind is dropping, no chance of this stuff blowing away. Best we can hope is that it’ll burn off, that the weather will do a U-turn and the fog will clear. Right now, there’s nothing we can do to change anything.
Until tomorrow, all we can do is prepare for the holiday as if nothing is wrong. We’ll deal with the weather as it comes.
Sometimes, life on Shetland is amazing. But you can never, ever, prepare for the weather.
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