Will it snow this Christmas? Latest Met Office verdict | EUROtoday

It’s that point of yr once more when the climate is getting colder, the knitted jumpers are popping out, and the nation is dreaming a couple of white Christmas.

But these hoping for snowflakes to cascade from the sky might have to attend a bit longer, because the Met Office’s future projections present {that a} whiteout on Christmas Day shouldn’t be very seemingly.

Tom Crabtree, deputy chief forecaster on the Met Office, mentioned: “High pressure is expected to build into next week, bringing drier and less mild conditions for the Christmas period.

“Although temperatures will drop, they are not plummeting. Overnight frosts are likely, and some mist and fog is possible in places, but significant cold weather looks less probable.

“Falling temperatures do bring the potential for some wintry showers in the east, but it is too early to discern details for any particular day over the Christmas period.”

The threshold for a “white Christmas”, the Met Office mentioned, requires only a single snowflake to be noticed falling on Christmas Day, anyplace within the UK.

Last yr, the Met Office predicted a “grey Christmas”, with patches of rain and cloud coupled with gentle temperatures.

The final time there was technically a white Christmas within the UK was in 2023, when 11 per cent of climate stations recorded snow falling, however none reported any settled snow on the bottom.

The final time there was widespread settled snow at Christmas was again in 2010. That was the UK’s whitest Christmas on document, with 83 per cent of stations recording snow on the bottom.

More than half of all Christmas Days since 1960 have met the edge, with round half of these years seeing a minimum of 5 per cent of climate stations reporting snow falling on the massive day.

However, the possibilities of the snow really settling are slim: that has solely occurred 4 occasions, in 1981, 1995, 2009 and 2010.

For most elements of the United Kingdom, Christmas is just originally of the interval when it is more likely to snow and we usually tend to see snow in January and February than in December, based on the Met Office.

Snow on common settles on the bottom (snow mendacity) 3 days in December, in comparison with 3.3 days in January, 3.4 days in February and 1.9 days in March (1991 – 2020 long-term averaging interval).

Met Office information reveals the information of which areas have skilled a ‘White Christmas’ since 1960 to 2024. They mostly occur in The Highlands which had the very best occurrences of 175 snowy Christmases, adopted carefully by Aberdeenshire with 92 instances.

White Christmases have been extra frequent within the 18th and nineteenth centuries, much more so earlier than the change of calendar in 1752 which successfully introduced Christmas Day again by 12 days.

Climate change has additionally introduced increased common temperatures over land and sea and this typically lowered the possibilities of a white Christmas.