BBC Scotland Weather
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79mph wind gust recorded on South Uist.

Steven McKenzie
BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter

Away from Scotland, some of the world's top surfers are watching the conditions at sea with interest.

The huge swells being created by the Atlantic storm are expected to result in potentially record-breaking sized waves off Nazare in Portugal.

Image source, AP

In 2011 at Nazare, Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara set a world record for the large wave surfed.

The 45-year-old caught a 78ft wave, beating the previous 2008 record by more than a foot.

According to Magicseaweed.com, a website that produces swell charts used by surfers, several international surfers are in or head to Nazare.

The Skye Bridge is now closed to high-sided vehicles, tweets, external Traffic Scotland.

Channel 4 News presenter Alex Thomson

Alex Thomson tweets:, external Blimey - arriving Glasgow 09.10 where it is still virtually dark!

Image source, Alex Thomson

Renfrewshire Council tweets:, external All schools in Renfrewshire are open today.

BBC Radio Scotland

Morning Call right now - tell @LWhiteMedia if you're affected by the 'weather bomb'? Do you prepare for winter weather? 0500 92 95 00 or tweet.

You can listen live to the programme here.

Steven McKenzie
BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter

More than 30 schools and nurseries are closed in the Highlands. The closures affect 2,082 children.

Ian: Rain, rain loads of rain what would [we] do if it was snow? A massive crash of thunder this morning at around 06:30 - very loud, woke me to the point I jumped out of bed thinking something had happened outside and to the house.

Kenneth, Islay: This is Scotland!!! It is winter! This is normal! It is called a gale! Why the big fuss?

John Beattie
BBC Scotland

tweets, external: Cycled in today, them sideways gusts are fun, hope all of you on two wheels are well.

James Cook
Scotland Correspondent, BBC News

Some 20 vehicles stuck in icy conditions at Cairn O' Mount on the B974 Banchory to Fettercairn road in Aberdeenshire. #scotstorm

BBC Scotland Travel
Latest

An update on the bridges - the Forth Road Bridge is closed to high sided vehicles, and the Tay Road Bridge is only open to cars.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney was part of a meeting of the Scottish government's resilience committee last night, planning for the bad weather.

"Essentially what we discussed was the co-ordination of planning arrangements round the country to make sure all of the steps that could be taken in advance of the significant weather, could be put in place," he told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland.

"We have an amber warning in place and it has been in place since the weekend. Essentially the amber warning is: 'be prepared' for disruption.

Image source, PA

"What is also means is that the power companies, for example, who were part of the call last night, have deployed additional resources around the country to ensure they have more than 300 linesmen to be available to restore power supplies.

"It's all about taking the precautions we can and mitigate disruption to members of the public.

"It's important to keep this in context, it's not a surprise that Scotland faces severe winter weather. We face it to a greater or lesser extent every year. This morning we're wrestling with a number of different issues.

"We're wrestling with very high wind speeds, which are not that uncommon in the Western Isles for example, but they are still severe and need to be prepared for.

"We're wrestling with the possibility of coastal flooding because of the sea surges and strength of waves that are likely to come, and in other parts of the country we're wrestling with the issues of snow on the A9 and M74 and we also will, I suspect, be dealing with a bit of flooding on some of the river systems in Scotland but mainly on agricultural land."

Anonymous: #weather bomb. An 'Americanism.' What would be the Scots word? Stooshie, Stramash....?

Martyn, Glasgow: Bad sleet and snow on Stockiemuir Road - Bearsden to Drymen very treacherous driving conditions - slow down and be safe!

Morven Smith, from Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), has spoken to Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland about the power outage on the Western Isles.

"We do have around 17,500 homes in the Western Isles without power and we'd like to apologise for that," said.

"We've got our engineers heading to the power stations that we have in Stornoway and South Uist and they will power up those over the next hour and a half.

"We have seen some really strong winds overnight so we believe that it is weather related but we just want to restore power to our customers before the engineers have a look and figure out what happened. We hope to have supplies sorted by 10:30 at the latest,

"We do take precautionary measures, we were aware of the severe weather so we have moved staff, resources and equipment around to the areas we felt were going to be badly affected."

James Cook
Scotland Correspondent, BBC News

Engineers hope to restore power to 17,500 homes in the Western Isles by 10.30am @SSE tell #bbcgms.

Richard Brown, head of hydrology at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), told Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme that their systems are indicating flooding may not be as severe as predicted.

"I should say we have no major concerns over the larger rivers today, most of the rain is locked up as snow in the higher ground so the rivers shouldn't be a problem." he said.

"There will, of course, be localised flooding but our main focus is on coastal flooding."

Image source, Getty Images

He added: "The flood alert for coastal areas covers the entire west coast from Ayrshire and Arran right up through the Western and Northern Isles and into Orkney and Shetland."

SEPA advise people to remain vigilant and be mindful of the conditions, especially along more exposed coastal areas.

The latest flood updates can be found on their website., external

Michael: News. First we have Black Friday, now it's Weather bomb. How many more Americanisms can we import this month? Can we not use our own words?

Ewan Macdonald: Travelling from Beauly to Crianlarich (currently at Fort William) and already experienced high winds, horizontal rain, snow, black ice, flooding and lighting. Good Scottish weather!

CalMac Service Info tweets:, external The 09:00 from #Oban and 10:00 from #Lismore are cancelled due to high winds. Review at 12:00 with regards to afternoon sailings.

Gary Robertson
BBC Radio Scotland

Power out in the Western Isles so latest from @SSE #bbcgms 0810. Followed by advice from Scottish Govt @JohnSwinney #scotstorm

BBC weatherman Simon King

Ready for the consequences of the #weatherbomb? It certainly looks impressive...