The Highlands and islands was battered by wind and rain yesterday, causing major disruption for travellers.
Ferries were cancelled across the west coast and trains between Inverness and central belt were disrupted for several hours after trees fell on the railway line near Dalwhinnie.
Skies cleared and winds dropped late afternoon and forecasters predicted a better day today.
Met Office meteorologist Mark Wilson said: “Saturday is looking like a better day. There could be light rain further east across Scotland but the Highlands and Islands should have a better day, with more in the way of sunshine about, although there is still a fair amount of cloud around.
“There will be a deterioration on Sunday with some rain.”
Gusts of 108mph were recorded at the top of Cairngorm Mountain yesterday morning, forcing the closure of the mountain railway.
Meanwhile, a full emergency was declared on Shetland when a small plane, with five people on board, experienced difficulties in gale force winds on its approach to the island’s main airport.
The pilot alerted air traffic control about its difficulties in strong south easterly winds on its approach to Sumburgh Airport at 11.40am.
Shetland’s two lifeboat crews, as well as two auxiliary coastguard teams and their search and rescue helicopter, Oscar Charlie, were paged.
But a spokesman for Shetland Coastguard said that less than two minutes afterwards the plane landed safely and the emergency services were stood down without fully mobilising.
He added: “They were paged but not tasked. Within about one minute and 30 seconds they were asked to stand down. This kind of thing happens fairly frequently.”
A host of ferry services were cancelled or disrupted throughout yesterday morning, but services returned to normal in the afternoon.
Many services were on amber alert, with ferry operator CalMac warning that they could be subject to disruption and cancellation at short notice.
The morning ferry to Islay was cancelled but extra sailings were put on in the afternoon.
Morning sailings from Stornoway and Ullapool were also cancelled.