It’s December, which means you’re almost certainly starting to think seriously about Christmas. It’s time to plan what presents to buy, which festive songs to play and, crucially, figure out how to travel to wherever you need to be in the festive period. For instance, will you need to wrap up warm and navigate snow?
Britain’s weather has recently swung from unseasonably mild to seasonably freezing, and some have forecasted that a ‘Beast from the East’ could arrive in December. When it comes to the end of the month, forecasters are releasing long-range predictions for what the weather could look like over Christmas and New Year.
Will there be a White Christmas in the UK this year?
If you’re holding out for a snowy Christmas, the stats aren’t in your favour. In the UK, December is actually one of the least snowy winter months – we only get snow settling on the ground for about three days on average. January and February are far better bets, with around 3.3 and 3.4 snowy days respectively, and even around 1.9 days in March.
The last white Christmas in the UK was in 2023, when 11 percent of the Met Office’s weather stations recorded snow falling, but none of it settled. Early forecasts suggest snow is going to be unlikely on December 25.
What does the Met Office forecast say?
For December 15 to December 29, the Met says that ‘there is a greater chance of spells of high pressure during this period’, and that there are higher chances of dry weather than in the first weeks of December. This also means increased possibility of overnight fog and frost.
That said, the Met Office also expects there to probably be some rain, showers and strong winds in the west. The only mention of snow refers to the north, on higher ground.
What does the BBC’s forecast say?
The Beeb released its full long-range forecast for the end of December (15-28) last Friday (November 28), in which it said there is ‘low confidence’ in predicting the second half of the month ‘due to ongoing disturbances in the upper atmosphere and the uncertainty around their expected impacts as they trickle down to the troposphere, the layer in which our weather occurs’.
That said, BBC Weather also says that conditions ‘could be drier than normal for a while before Christmas’, and that temperatures will be ‘near or slightly above normal, but with some clearer and calmer nights there could be more frost and fog’.
The forecaster stresses that Christmas is, in weather forecasting terms, a long way off and that ‘there is a lot yet to resolve’.
In other words, watch this space for updates.
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