Scotland on camera in November, from Cairngorm to a Shetland voe

At 13:15 UTC today the Loch Morlich camera on Cairngorm had the whole Glenmore basin in frame: the ski centre car park with a dozen cars in it, the funicular track running up the right-hand side, a pale strip of Loch Morlich behind the forest, and heather the colour of wet cardboard. No snow. The frame our page served carried the camera's own stamp along the top, Morlich 2026-11-02 14:07:14, which is about fifty minutes ahead of the clock I fetched it with.

Eleven of the cameras on our Aviemore page are Cairngorm Mountain's own on a 60-second re-fetch, counted on 2026-11-02. The mountain's own weather and webcams page puts the refresh at the same 60 seconds and tells you to reload the browser for the next image, so nothing is lost between them and us.

The week the railway is shut

The view I would open first this week is the Ptarmigan camera, because almost nobody is standing in it. Cairngorm's webcam page says the funicular railway and the Ptarmigan Top Station are closed from Monday 2 to Monday 9 November for maintenance and compliance checks, and that the terrace the camera looks out from is 1,097 metres above sea level. At 13:15 today that terrace was inside the cloud: a tow pylon, a run of snow fence, gravel, and nothing at all past about fifty metres. The same page has the railway running at five pounds a ticket from 10 to 30 November, which is the cheap fortnight to put yourself in the frame instead of watching it.

Two more on the same hill are worth a morning. White Lady points up the slope that holds snow longest, and Fiacaill Ridge looks across the top of the Coire Cas bowl, which is where you will see the first cover from the car park without walking up to it. Both refresh on the same minute cycle.

The funny thing about the Cairngorm set is the clocks. At the moment I pulled them, Morlich said 14:07:14 and Ptarmigan said 01:19:02 PM. Same mountain, same fetch, forty-eight minutes apart, and neither one agrees with GMT.

Four hundred and sixty metres of A9

The camera at Drumochter Pass is Traffic Scotland's, and we re-fetch it every ten minutes. At 460 metres, or 1,508 feet, Drumochter Summit is the highest point on the A9, according to the A9 dualling programme's own page for the section that runs through it. Everything driving between Perth and Inverness goes over this, which is why the pass is the first thing to look at when the forecast says snow above 400 metres: the frame at 13:16 today, stamped 12:23, had one articulated lorry on the northbound carriageway, low sun off the wet surface and a concrete barrier down the middle. Dry. In February the same frame is the difference between leaving and not leaving.

Eight and a half hours of daylight

Shetland is where the November light runs out first. Lunna House at Mossbank sits at 60.40 degrees north, looking over the voe below it, and for 2026-11-02 the sun there rose at 07:31 and set at 16:04:49 UTC, 8 hours and 33 minutes apart. We re-fetch it every ten minutes. At 13:16 the frame had the voe flat and grey, the old house with its chimneys, a line of vans and trailers along the croft, and one sheep standing in the middle of the foreground field. The camera also burns its own diagnostics into the top line, exposure and circuit temperature, and today the circuit was running at 37.0 degrees.

On Cairngorm the sun sets at 16:28 on the same date. From half four onwards these frames go black, and I have not worked out which of them carry enough light on them to be worth opening after dark. That is a job for a week of evening checks, not a guess.

Harbours, moorings and one firth

The nicest surprise in Scotland today was the Royal Forth Yacht Club camera at Granton, which we re-fetch every 30 seconds. The frame I pulled at 13:19:31 was stamped 13:19:11: twenty seconds old. Yachts on their winter moorings, mooring buoys all over the flat water, the breakwater, and behind it the new towers at Leith with the yellow legs of a jack-up vessel in the docks beyond. It is the closest thing to a live view of the Firth of Forth that I have found, and I could not find any public camera pointed at the three bridges themselves.

Three more on salt water, all re-fetched every two and a half minutes:

• St Andrews East Sands, from the sailing club, looking down the ramp onto the beach and the harbour wall. At 13:11:59 the tide was most of the way out, two people were walking the wet sand, and a gull was sitting on the sign in the foreground. Best an hour either side of low water, when the rocks come up.
• John o' Groats, looking north across the Pentland Firth with Orkney along the horizon. The 13:11:45 frame had heavy cloud with one hole punched in it, the firth glassy, and the village strung out along the shore. Worth opening when the wind is in the west and the tide is running, because that stretch of water does not stay flat for long.
• Brodick on Arran, which looks over the bay the Ardrossan ferry comes into.

If you want the ferry terminals, the useful ones are Armadale on Skye, Kennacraig for the Islay boats, Colonsay and Berneray for the Sound of Harris. They refresh on the same two and a half minute cycle, and in a westerly they tell you whether the sailing is going to happen before the operator does.

Inland, Loch Ness has two: Drumnadrochit at ten minutes and Alltsigh at two and a half. The Alltsigh one is the better view, a long look down the loch from a cafe terrace above the A82, and at 13:07 today the tables and chairs were still out on the decking with the birches behind them not yet bare.

What we are doing next

The whole Scotland set is 123 live cameras as of 2026-11-02, and the Cairngorm eleven sit on a 60-second re-fetch along with Cumbernauld Airport's twelve, which is what you want for a hill that changes hour to hour. We are keeping that interval through the season. On 10 November, when the funicular reopens, I will check whether the Top Station camera is still pointed at the terrace or has gone back to the Loch Morlich view the mountain's page describes, and update the camera page if it has moved.

The open question is the clocks. Morlich says 14:07, Ptarmigan says 01:19 PM, Drumochter says 12:23, and Granton was twenty seconds behind my own clock, all in the same ten minutes of the same afternoon. Our own fetch time is the one number I trust on any of these frames, and it is not written anywhere a reader can see it. I think it should be.