Is Sheffield in for a white Christmas?

We’ve come to expect snow on Christmas Day after years of seeing films, tv shows and even adverts featuring piles of the white stuff, which is excitedly anticipated by kids of all ages every year.

Despite snow feeling like as much a part of Christmas Day as turkey, the Queen’s Speech and paper crowns, it hasn’t actually snowed on the day itself in Sheffield since 2010, although it didn’t settle in most areas.

Nevertheless, we still hold out hope that we will wake up on Christmas morning to a picture-perfect blanket of snow – but the Met Office say it’s not looking likely.

The definition that the Met Office uses to define a white Christmas is for one snowflake to be observed falling in the 24 hours of 25 December somewhere in the UK.

Despite bookmakers slashing the odds on a white Christmas, the Met Office say there’s a good chance we’ll see rain instead.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes has cut the odds of snow in any part of the country on December 25 from 4/9 to 1/3.

Ladbrokes spokesman Alex Apati said: "It's looking increasingly likely we'll see snow on Christmas with temperatures continuing to drop."

However, a Met Office spokesman said: “We are more likely to see snow between January and March than in December.

“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.

“In terms of the statistical likelihood of snow based on climatology, we know that a snowflake has fallen somewhere in the UK on Christmas Day 38 times in the last 54 years, so we can probably expect more than half of all Christmas Days to be a 'white Christmas'.

“Traditionally we used to use a single location in the country to define a white Christmas, which was the Met Office building in London.

“However, with the increase in betting on where will see a white Christmas, the number of locations have increased and can now include sites such as Buckingham Palace, Belfast (Aldergrove Airport), Aberdeen (Pittodrie Stadium, Aberdeen FC), Edinburgh (Castle), Coronation Street in Manchester and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.”

The forecast for Sheffield next Wednesday is ‘changeable and sometimes windy’.

Most of the rain is looking most likely in the west of the region, with drier spells more likely in the east and southeast.

Snow may occur at times in the north, mainly on high ground.

There remains a chance that more settled, brighter conditions may push in towards the end of the week, leading to a trend to slightly colder than average temperatures.

Snow flurries covered regions of the country including Derbyshire and Leicestershire as temperatures plunged to as cold as -8C on Saturday night.

A yellow warning for ice in in place for South Yorkshire tonight and tomorrow, amid freezing temperatures and rain.

Met Office forecaster Craig Snell said: “There are warnings in place for ice and hill snow for north Wales, north England and Scotland throughout the weekend, so roads could be extremely slippery.

“There could be up to three centimetres of snow falling, particularly on hills above 300 metres in Scotland and The Pennines.

The rest of the country will also feel cold as bitter winds and rain showers continue.

“Temperatures could dip to around 2-4C this evening.”