Revealed: the UK cities most likely to have a white Christmas this year
White Christmas romantics should consider making tracks for Stirling in a few weeks as this Scottish city promises the highest probability of snow in Britain come December 25.
But it is by no means guaranteed, with just a 12.9 per cent chance of the white stuff making an appearance on the day itself, according to new meteorological data.
The second-most likely city to wake up to snow on Christmas morning is Aberdeen, with a 12.5 per cent chance, followed by Inverness, at 11.29 per cent.
The Scottish trio were followed in fourth by the English city of Bradford, which has a 10.48 per cent chance of a white Christmas, according to data from World Weather Online, collated by VoucherCloud, which analysed historical snowfall from the last eight Christmases.
The 10 UK cities most likely to have a white Christmas
Stirling - 12.9 per cent chance
Aberdeen - 12.5%
Inverness - 11.29%
Bradford - 10.48%
Newry - 8.47%
Carlisle - 8.47%
Wolverhampton - 8.47%
Birmingham - 8.06%
Portsmouth - 8.06%
Armagh - 7.66%
Newry, Northern Ireland, was the city fifth most likely to see snow on Christmas Day, with a 8.47 per cent chance.
The capital, London, has just a 6 per cent chance of a white Christmas, while Truro, on the south coast, has the smallest probability, just 1.61 per cent.
The Met Office says that of the last 54 years “a snowflake has fallen somewhere in the UK on Christmas Day 38 times… so we can probably expect more than half of all Christmas days to be a ‘white Christmas’”.
“However,” the Met Office says, “the Dickensian scene of widespread snow lying on the ground on Christmas Day is much rarer. There has only been a widespread covering of snow on the ground (where more than 40 per cent of stations in the UK reported snow on the ground at 9am) four times in the last 51 years.”
The Met Office defines a white Christmas as one snowflake being observed falling in the 24 hours of December 25 somewhere in the UK.
It says the last white Christmas was 2010, when there was snow on the ground at 83 per cent of its monitoring stations, the highest number ever recorded. Technically, 2015 was also a white Christmas in the UK with 10 per cent of weather stations recording snow falling, however none reported any snow on the ground.
The situation across the Pond is a little different, where VoucherCloud’s data shows that Alaska is the state most likely to have snow on Christmas Day, with a 66.13 per cent probability. In second was Vermont, with a 56.05 per cent chance, then Minnesota, 41.13 per cent.
Anyone in the Big Apple over Christmas has a 21.77 per cent chance of seeing snow, according to the data.
Globally, broken down by country, Russia has the highest chance of snow - which is not surprising given it is both cold and vast - with a 60.89 per cent probability.
Belarus (52.82 per cent) and Finland (49.19 per cent) were second and third most likely, respectively.
England is the 46th most likely, behind Tajikistan, but ahead of Afghanistan.
In total, 127 countries were found to have zero chance of snow on Christmas Day, including, unsurprisingly, Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
