Dylan Thomas' poem 'A Child's Christmas In Wales' tells of a British landscape covered in snow at Christmas. Is this accurate, is a White Christmas a common occurance in Great Britain?

Tabby Tom

I'd say White Christmases are pretty rare, at least in the south of England. We've had no appreciable snow in London since January 1991, and I don't think we've had a white Christmas since some time in the 1980s. Christmas in the south is typically grey and damp with temperatures in the forties (Fahrenheit). British bookmakers take bets on White Christmases, and they had to pay out two or three years ago. But they define a white Christmas as any measurable snowfall at the London Weather Centre on Christmas Day, and there just happened to be a slight flurry of snow there for a few minutes. Dec 24 02, 11:04 AM

Jac

Snow falls on Christmas Day in the UK much more often than the bookies have to pay out on it - it fell in some places on Christmas Day 2001, for instance. The list of places acceptable for 'one flake of snow to fall' has got shorter and shorter, though, leading to far fewer 'official' White Christmases. Philip Eden writes quite a lot about this in the Telegraph, and you can probably find some of his articles archived at www.telegraph.co.uk Dec 24 02, 10:16 PM