A white Christmas? It's a long shot at 20/1

Thursday 22 December 2016

A Jersey bookie says so far no one has placed a bet with him on the chances of the Island having a ‘white Christmas’ this year.

Chris Benest from CB Sports says: "...my tills are empty”.

Even with odds of 20/1, no one seems keen to place a flutter.

He says normally people put bets on towards the end of November, but he believes they’ve looked at the long-term forecast and concluded the chances are very, very slim.

The Met Office is predicting temperatures of between 10-12C.

For you to win the bet, ‘snow’, as defined by Jersey’s Met Department, has to fall at the airport some time between midnight on the 24^th and midnight on the 25^th.

The Island last had a snowflake falling over Christmas in 2004 although the Met Department says it was more of a sleet shower. Before that the last ‘white Christmas’ was back in 1970.

According to weather records there’s been snow somewhere in the British Isles on Christmas Day on 38 occasions in the past 54 years. But, it’s becoming less common, something some commentators are putting down to global warming.

Nationally Aberdeen has the highest odds this year – 6/4.

The last time the UK was blanketed in snow was in 2010. It covered 83% of the Met Office’s observation stations  - the highest ever recorded.

The deepest snow ever was in Kingrogan, Perthshire, Scotland in 1981. 47cm was recorded.

The warmest and wettest Christmas Day was 2015.

Though white Christmases are historically quite common in Scotland, Britain as a whole is more likely to get snowfall in January – December is actually the least likely winter month to see snow.