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)

Do you know what tomorrow is apart from Saturday? Here’s a clue:

St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain, full forty days it will remain,
St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair, for forty days t’will rain no more.

This baseless meteorological superstition dates from the late 9th century. Saint Swithin was Bishop of Winchester from 852 to 862. At his request, he was buried in the churchyard, where ‘rain and the steps of passersby might fall on my grave’.

According to legend, after his body was moved on 15th July 971 by a group of over-zealous monks to a more prestigious location inside the cathedral a great storm ensued.

Legend tells us that this botched exhumation caused it to rain for forty days and forty nights. Common sense tells us that this legend is rubbish, and has continued to be rubbish for every single one of the last 1,502 summers.

Having said that, given how unpredictable this summer has been so far, this might be the year that finally proves the rhyme.

So just what is up with the weather at the moment? Maybe this is global warming kicking in? Or could it be that, as usual, we can experience in London three seasons in one afternoon?

The scientific boffins are certainly worried, suggesting that it won’t be long before melting ice caps cover the globe with rather more water than a few shower clouds can produce.

And London is one of the world cities with the most to fear.

Should the Greenland ice cap ever melt then the sea level would rise by nearly 30ft and a large part of the capital would be flooded. The Houses of Parliament are particularly vulnerable, rising sea levels would completely submerge the lower floors of this riverside building, given its inhabitants, some might say hurrah! It’d also be farewell to Westminster Abbey, 10 Downing Street, St James Park and the Tower of London, and that’s just for starters. A huge swathe of London lies below the 30ft contour, including Fulham, Chelsea, Docklands and Stratford north of the river, and most of Wandsworth, Lambeth and Southwark south of the river. The City and the West End would remain safely above the rising waters, although the tube network would be flooded out.

We continue to pump excessive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere like there’s no tomorrow, except here in London, where in 6 weeks’ time we can hold our heads up high with the proliferation of electric vehicles on our streets thanks to ULEZ (just a pity we’ve moved the generation of the power and its pollution somewhere else!).

Future generations will pay the price of our materialistic greed, and not enough important people yet seem to care. But I suspect our recent wet weather has nothing at all to do with global warming and is merely a symptom of the wildly variable British climate. Last summer was record-breakingly hot, followed by ‘The Troll of Trondheim’ giving us low temperatures not seen for a generation, as the BBC like to describe our weather.

London’s weather is unpredictable and that’s why we love to talk about it.

St Swithin’s Day 2023 is as unpredictable as ever, CabbieBlog will be keeping a tally over the next forty days to see whether St. Swithin’s predictions prove accurate. Come back on 25th August and see if London is underwater.

Featured image: Heavy rain on the Euston Road: It’s not evident in this picture other than the light reflecting off the large umbrella but it is currently raining very heavily on Euston Road by Philip Halling (CC BY-SA 2.0).