How common is a white Christmas where you are?

Met Office data analyzed by the BBC shows there has been a less common white Christmas over the past two decades.

While we can’t use what happens on one day of the year to assess whether the decline is clearly due to climate change, scientists suggest the likelihood of a white Christmas will decrease in the future.

According to the Met Office, the UK has already warmed by 1 degree since the 1950s and we’ve seen less frost and snow as a result.

There were five years in the 1990s and early 2000s that featured a widespread white Christmas, with more than 100 weather stations reporting snowfall.

But the most stations reporting a white Christmas in the last 20 years were 30 in 2010.

Four white Christmases have been declared so far in the 2020s, with snowfall reported somewhere in the UK, but snowfall has only been confirmed by up to six stations in a year.

While better technology means that recording snowfall in just one place in the UK increases the likelihood of a confirmed white Christmas, the number of stations actually seeing snow on Christmas Day appears to have decreased.

Our winters are expected to be warmer and wetter, and a Met Office spokesman confirmed snowfalls are “becoming less frequent as our climate warms”.

“Natural variability means cold and snowy spells will still occur,” they added, but we can expect “fewer frosty and snowy days.”

Additional reporting by Alix Hattenstone.