There are two yellow weather warnings remaining in place for today, Saturday 10th Jan and tomorrow Sunday 11th that include some wintry showers. Snowfall will create more accumulations in some areas, with ice being a more widespread risk.
The Met Office has also now issued a more localised amber warning for Sunday that extends from the west into the Western Aberdeenshire area. Snow is expected to fall to low levels across the amber warning area during Sunday morning before becoming increasingly confined to higher ground in the afternoon.
In terms of impacts, we are on an improving temperature picture with potential for some refreezing overnight. Accumulations will be more impactful on higher ground as you would typically expect with winter weather.
Weekend contact
Over the weekend, Aberdeenshire Council’s contact centre will remain open from 9am to 5pm, for urgent issues only. If you are in a crisis due to the continued weather conditions and have no alternative support, you can contact us on 0345 608 1208.
Emergency contacts
Out of hours emergency contacts will remain active as usual over the weekend as follows:
• Housing repairs: 0345 08 12 03
• Issues with other buildings (such as town halls, schools, libraries, public toilets, or leisure centres): 0800 954 3576
• Homelessness: 03456 08 12 06
• Social care: 03456 08 12 06
Details for contacting the council with routine and non-urgent enquiries can be found at http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/…/contact-customer…
Flooding potential
If you live in a known flooding area, please ensure you sign-up now for alerts from SEPA call the Floodline on 0345 988 1188 or visit http://floodline.sepa.org.uk/floodupdates
Road users should continue to take extra care throughout the coming period of thaw.
The rise in temperature will bring snowmelt and the potential for localised flooding. Households and businesses are responsible for their property and should take immediate steps to safeguard it from flooding.
Snowmelt can create hazardous conditions on roads with widespread surface water pooling in unexpected places. There may be a risk of aquaplaning and loss of vehicle control for drivers and slippery conditions for other road users and pedestrians.
Gullies and surface drains often remain partially frozen, resulting in a buildup of meltwater that can build quickly to overwhelm watercourses, drains, and culverts, leading to sudden flooding of roads, farmland, and other property.
For your safety and the safety of others, we also ask that you remain alert to the conditions and do not enter floodwater. Parents, guardians, and carers: please talk to your children and young people about the dangers of playing in floodwater and the importance of staying away from flooded areas.
Roads
Settlements that are still badly affected by deep snow, such as Rhynie and Insch, are a priority for our teams.
The focus is on improving and creating access. For areas still affected by deep snow, this will involve digging out and removing snow from the area because the volume that has fallen is generally greater than the space available on the streets to hold it.
Significant progress has been made to ensure that a level of connectivity has been established for the vast majority of settlements throughout Aberdeenshire.
Support us with images of road conditions
To assist with our level of understanding of conditions in each and every road/street in Aberdeenshire our portal allowing residents to upload a photo of the current road conditions at their location is already proving incredibly helpful updates.
This crowd-sourced data is already helping our teams direct resources where they are most needed over the next few days. Residents can submit up to five photos of local road conditions via the council website as follows:
- Visit http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/snowimages
- Select your location by zooming into the map and clicking once
- Once you have found your location, click ‘Next’
- Adjust the time and date the photos were taken if necessary
- Upload your photos
No personal data is gathered through the system, and images will not be shared publicly, but they will be very helpful to roads teams as work to reopen local roads continues. Thanks in advance for your help.
In the Winter folder of the myAberdeenshire app, view live feeds from snow gates and details of gritter routes and gritter vehicles’ status. Our gritter route list is colour-coded accessibility and to show the status of gritter routes and snow gates.
Details of gritting routes can also be found on our website: https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/…/win…/gritting-routes/
Waste and Recycling
All household recycling centres due to be open today have managed to do so. Please check your local road conditions before travelling.
We have delayed the start of bulky collections for the year to redeploy that resource elsewhere.
We are incredibly grateful for the fantastic support and responses to our Waste and Recycling team’s effort this far. Your continued patience and understanding are greatly appreciated as we work through the impacts from this significant weather event.
As conditions improve, we will look at a larger scale catchup of collections missed. Details of this will be shared in due course.
In this weather, to ensure the safety of our collection crews and your property, we can only confirm which scheduled routes are being attempted on the morning of the collection day. As such, please avoid calling the contact centre for updates on bins this weekend and this will support them to service any urgent queries.
Schools
Decisions on school openings are back to being made locally by each school. You can view the latest decisions on our website from 4pm before any given school day: https://online.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/school-closures
General advice
For more information and to access local preparedness resources, visit https://publications.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/winter-weather…
To see our planned gritting for each day, go to https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/…/wint…/gritting-routes
Stay informed—follow trusted sources like council websites and social media channels for updates and advice:
• MET OFFICE: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/
• SEPA: https://www.sepa.org.uk/
• SSEN: https://powertrack.ssen.co.uk/powertrack
General advice for road users remains:
- Plan ahead and avoid unnecessary travel
- All road users should consider if they really need to travel during adverse weather.
- Consider delaying travel until conditions improve
- If you are travelling on the roads, prepare yourself and your vehicle for the conditions
- Ensure your mobile phone is charged and plan your journey, including an alterna