Crystal explores odds of a white Christmas

7th December 2016, by Abi Butcher

Will we have snow this Christmas? Crystal teams up with the Met Office to find out. Photo: visitlondon.co.uk

Crystal Ski Holidays and the Met Office have teamed up to work out the likelihood of the UK receiving snow this Christmas. The ski tour operator has created a snow calculator called Remember That December? to forecast whether our dreams of a white Christmas will come true.

As well as highlighting the most memorable white Christmases we’ve had in the UK, Remember That December? attempts to calculate the likelihood of snow on 25 December by analysing 25 years’ worth of snowfall and depth data from the Met Office. The website also looks in detail at the three most memorable white in the past quarter of a century — such as the Christmas in 2010 when depths reached as high as 16cm in some parts of the country with even Devon receiving a huge dump, leaving 20cm on the ground.

Martin Nolan from Crystal said, “The will-it, won’t-it aspect of snow on Christmas Day is something that Brits talk about every year. Here at Crystal, snow is vitally important for our business so we wanted to create something fun that would celebrate this. The experts at the Met Office know that snow is notoriously one of the most difficult types of weather to forecast, but we hope that our fun snow calculator will help those wondering about a white Christmas.”

The Met Office historical data shows that it’s good news for Scotland, with many regions being offered a 55 per cent chance of snow. The East of England also has a good chance of a white Christmas, where it is 26 per cent likely that they’ll see the white stuff with the north east and the West Midlands enjoying odds of snow nearing 20 per cent.

But the south of Britain isn’t looking so good. South Wales and the South West have a 12 and 14 per cent likelihood of a white Christmas. Snow lovers in Yorkshire and The Humber, East Midlands and North Wales are likely to be disappointed, too — with just a nine per cent chance of waking up to a winter wonderland on Christmas Day.
  
But while many parts of the nation may not see anywhere near that much snow this Christmas, Remember That December? also looks across three years that witnessed some of the heaviest snowfall on record and tells users what the deepest recorded snow levels were — in which year.
 
Rosalie Fairbairn of the Met Office said about their involvement in the campaign: “We were delighted to help with Crystal Ski Holidays’ fun Christmas campaign that celebrates the positive side of snowfall in the UK. Although we cannot endorse any of the predictions made by the snow calculator, and we know in the UK that weather history isn’t a great way of predicting the weather future, we’re pleased our historical data can give people a nostalgic trip down memory lane to Christmases of the recent past.”
 
“The snow calculator is a bit of fun, but as Christmas Day gets nearer you can find out if snow is actually forecast by visiting the Met Office website.”

To have a look for yourself, visit rememberthatdecember.co.uk
 

• ski
• snow
• tour operator
• christmas

Back to news