How fantastic it would be to wake up on Christmas morning, pull back the curtains and see the landscape covered by a thick layer of snow? Muffled sounds; hearing the crunch of car tyres as they drive by; the shriek of excited children; and a robin perched on your garden fork, Christmas card perfect.

We love snow on Christmas Day because it’s the one day of the year many of us don’t have to travel anywhere. We’re already where we need to be, the entire public transport network has already been shut down for the day and we couldn’t drive safely anywhere after last night’s bender.

Will there be a White Christmas this year? Well, no, sorry, there won’t, and with climate change, it’s not likely in the future.

A snowy Christmas Day in London is a rare event. Even rarer is a ‘proper’ White Christmas, rather than a single flake of snow falling on the Met Office roof will do for the definition that the bookies now use.

December’s always been a bit early in the winter for snow, we are more likely to see snow between January and March with snow or sleet falling an average of 3.9 days in December, compared to 5.3 days in January, 5.6 in February and 4.2 in March, and with the world having the hottest year on record this year, the entire 21st century looks like we’ll not see another White Christmas.

White Christmases were rather more common here during the ‘Little Ice Age’, back when the Thames used to regularly freeze over, but the last London Frost fair was held as long ago as 1814.

The most recent time London had a snowy holiday was in 2022, with 2021, 2020, and 2017 also being classed White Christmases.

But most of us think of a white Christmas as blankets of snow covering the UK – yet London hasn’t seen a truly white Christmas for 20 years. In the previous century, only ten Christmases in London have been white. That’d be 1916 (sleet), 1927 (snow, falling and lying), 1938 (sleet, but 15cm of snow lying on the ground), 1956 (snow), 1964 (snow), 1968 (sleet), 1970 (snow, falling and lying), 1976 (snow), 1996 (sleet) and 1999 (sleet). You may also remember a white 1963 and 1981, but that year doesn’t officially count because no snow fell actually on Christmas Day itself.

I remember the 1962-63, when a wintry outbreak brought snow on 12–13 December 1962, technically it didn’t snow on Christmas Day, but London had heavy snow late on 26–27 December, it wasn’t until the 6 March the first morning of the year without frost in Britain. Temperatures rose to 62.6 °F and the remaining snow disappeared.

London Underground in the snow: East Finchley station. View NW, towards Finchley Central and High Barnet/Mill Hill East, London Underground (Northern Line). Until 1939 this station had been on the LNER (ex-GNR) suburban section and goods trains (steam-hauled) were still working past here to Mill Hill East for the Gas Works until 10/62. This morning the ice had already been cleared and Tube trains were running by Ben Brooksbank (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)