southwestern peninsula of Kintyre; Norway is to the east; the Faroes, to the north; and Iceland, to the northwest. Climate The climate of Scotland is temperate and very changeable, but rarely extreme. Scotland is warmed by the North Atlantic Drift and given the northerly location of the country, experiences much milder conditions than areas on similar latitudes, such as Labrador in Canada—where icebergs are a common feature in winter. Average temperatures are lower than in the rest of Great Britain, with the coldest ever UK temperature of recorded at Braemar in the Grampian Mountains, on 10 January 1982 and also at Altnaharra, Highland, on 30 December 1995. Winter maxima average , with summer maxima averaging . Western coastal areas of Scotland are warmer than the east and inland areas, due to the influence of the Atlantic currents, and the colder surface temperatures of the North Sea; however, during rare hot spells, the west is cooler than the east. The highest temperature recorded was at Greycrook in the Scottish Borders on 9 August 2003. Areas such as Inverewe Garden in the northwest and the Logan Botanic Garden in the southwest have warm enough microclimates to support palm trees. Rainfall totals vary widely across Scotland—the western highlands of Scotland are one of the wettest places in the UK with annual rainfall up to . Due to the mountainous topography of the western Highlands, this type of precipitation is orographic in nature, with the warm, wet air forced to rise on contact with the mountainous coast, where it consequently, cools and condenses, forming clouds. In comparison, much of eastern Scotland receives less than annually; lying in the rain shadow of the western uplands. The town of Dunbar, east of Edinburgh, has an annual rainfall of merely 560.18 mm (22.05 in), less than Barcelona. Snowfall is less common in the lowlands, but becomes more common with altitude. Parts of the Highlands have an average of 36 to 60 snow days per year, while some western coastal areas have between 0 and 6 days with snow a year. Scotland's snowiest spot is the Cairngorm mountain range. The Hebridean island of Tiree received a total of 329 hours of sunshine in May 1946 and again in May 1975, the highest number of sunshine hours ever recorded in one month in Scotland. On the longest day of the year there is no complete darkness over the northern