Christmas day 2015 is looking more and more likely to be a white Christmas as bookies slash their odds
Everybody dreams of a white Christmas, don’t they? This year, it’s become far more probable that’s what the UK is going to get.
The Met Office says “for most parts of the UK, Christmas is right at the beginning of the period when it’s likely to snow. Looking at climate history, wintry weather is more likely between January and March than December”.
Read more: One third of Brits have already started Christmas shopping
Here's another fun nugget: white Christmases were more frequent in the 18th and 19th centuries, even more so before the change of calendar in 1752 which effectively brought Christmas day back by 12 days.
But although yesterday the Met Office said it is “too early to tell” what sort of weather the UK will experience this winter, bookies have slashed their odds.
After a series of bets, Betway has cut its odds on a white Christmas:
- 11/4 Edinburgh
- 11/4 Glasgow
- 9/2 Belfast
- 11/2 Dublin
- 11/2 Manchester
- 6/1 London
- 7/1 Birmingham
- 7/1 Cardiff
Betway's Alan Alger said: “Over the past week, punters have gritted their teeth and invested in a white Christmas. Forecasts suggests that it’s going to be a biting cold winter and we think there’s a chance readings will plunge below previous records.”
However, for it to have been a white Christmas technically just one flake has to have fallen from the sky. In other words, the Met office defines it to have snowed if their equipment registers just a flake of snow.
There was last a white Christmas in 2010, with the one before that was in 2009.
But with forecasters predicting arctic winds expected to bring snowy showers to the Highlands of Scotland within the next few days, and with the mild weather country the rest of the country has been experiencing on the way out, Christmas 2015 could be the stuff of, well, dreams…