Will there be snow for Christmas?

[NickNickleby]

Well, over yonder a thread like this one generates plenty of interest. As Christmas gets closer, the excitement grows as people post high quality forecasts from the tabloids predicting Arctic conditions for "submit your local area here". No matter, who cares about accuracy? we want excitement

Anyway, maybe there's a few knowledgeable folk here who can offer opinions on the topic. If necessary to generate interest and hopefully get some more engagement I'll find some nuggets and post them here.

A well known and respected amateur recently posted that Winter will be mainly mild, with possibly a very brief white interlude in early winter and a short sharp shock in Jan/Feb. Yesterday, said amateur suggested that in fact we could be looking at a 2010 type winter.

To counter that, I've watched GavsWeatherVids on youtube and I'm afraid I haven't looked in over a week due the depressing number of depressions he alluded to, also the word Atlantic featured quite often, and even I know that spells doom for snow.

Now, its my understanding that our location renders forecasts further than 3 or 4 days ahead as just pipe dreams, but what the heck, carry on.

Cheer me up, someone.

[Hairy-Joe]

Im a bit of a cynic when it comes to these long range forecasts. If they were accurate, the forecaster would make a LOT of money from them. They are also worded very carefully to be quite general. For example, short shock in Jan/Feb is very vague. There's no definition of "short shock" and of course the most probable time for cold weather is Jan/Feb.

I'm not having a go at you at all OP. It's just I find these long range forecasts a bit of a cod.

Forecast, we'll know about a week out.

Edit, I'd love snow for Christmas. It makes it magical. Just not so much snow that we can't move!

[NickNickleby]

To be fair to my source, I did not attempt to quote verbatim, as 'synoptics' and 'sudden stratospheric warming' and a host of other technical phraseology just goes right over my head. So, hands up, what you got was my hammy synopsis of what I read.

The way I see it, someone will get it right, even if (or should that be 'most likely' ) by accident. So if someone makes an authoritative looking prediction, and its what I want, I'm hooked!

Anyway, I'm off to the Irish Daily Mail Christmas Forecast pages, back shortly!!

[CelticRambler]

Where I am at the moment, they have the pegs in the ground to mark the edges of the road for when the snowplough passes, and the "compulsory winter tyres and/or chains and/or snow tyres" signs opened up. But it's a long, long way from Clare to here (as the song goes) so I doubt any of my local predictions will be of any use!

[Hairy-Joe]

I've a family member coming home for Christmas (hopefully). They are coming for the wet cold weather. They are in the Middle East where they get about three days rain a year.

Christmas day over there can be a "cool 28C".....

Asking them for a forecast can have a geographical bias

[NickNickleby]

My late sister came home for for Christmas years ago. We were sitting in my living room watching the weather forecast. I asked her what the weather was like back home. She said :
"oh its pretty much like this".
"what" says I, "6 degrees and wet!".
"no, I meant like here in the living room!"

[CelticRambler]

A few snow showers forecast for where I am for the end of next week. Just a taste of what might be in store later in the winter, but all-in-all it's still relatively mild at the moment.