With Storm Arwen inbound, we might be seeing snow and ice sooner than usual this year. However, what many people are hoping for is a white Christmas, to have a picture-perfect day with friends and family. Bookies are already taking odds for whether we’ll see a white Christmas in Edinburgh this year, in comparison to other major cities across the UK. Here’s all you need to know about the chances of a white Christmas in 2021 – and whether we might see snow even sooner than that. What’s the Edinburgh Met Office snow forecast? The Met Office has predicted snow and ice on higher ground across Scotland over the weekend. It is expected to reach some areas in and around Edinburgh from 9pm on Friday November 26th. This will be accompanied by rain and extremely strong winds, reaching up to 75mp in some places. The snow is likely to be restricted to the hills in and around Edinburgh this week. What is a white Christmas? Although many of us have the image of a thick coat of snow when we think of a white Christmas, it doesn’t actually have to be that dramatic. Met Office meteorologists define a white Christmas as being when as little as one snowflake is seen falling at some point on December 25th. In the past, the Met Office used to only look at one location in London to class a Christmas as white or not, but now there are points to look at all over the UK. Will it be a white Christmas in Edinburgh in 2021? The Scottish capital has the best odds for a white Christmas, according to gambling company William Hill. The bookie has offered 10-3 odds on the chance of snow on Christmas Day. These odds are better than anywhere else in the UK, beating last year’s front-runner Birmingham. Of course, it’s still too early for forecasters to say for sure but there is a good chance that many northern parts of the UK, including Edinburgh, will have a dusting of snow on December 25th. Forecasters should be able to give a pretty reliable answer as to whether we’ll see a white Christmas around five days before Christmas Day. When was the last white Christmas in the UK? It’s been four years since a white Christmas was recorded in multiple locations across the UK. on December 25th in 2017, 11% of UK weather stations reported snow falling, officially making it a white Christmas. What’s more, back in 1981, Kindrogan in Perthshire recorded a deep 47cm of snow, which made it the deepest snow on record on Christmas Day. The coldest Christmas Day in the UK was recorded back in 2010 in Altnaharras in Sutherland, with temperatures as low as -18.2 degrees Celsius. With Edinburgh having the highest chance of snow this Christmas, the Scottish capital might be back to break a weather record sooner rather than later.
