A look at the weather for a few world resorts and locations including Lapland, New York, the Canary Islands and Germany in the run up to Christmas.
If you are heading away this Christmas, the good news is that fog looks unlikely for UK airports which lessens the chance of delays, from the weather at least. There still is the chance of some snow and ice in the north later this week.
A large high pressure over Iberia, NW Africa and the Canaries should bring a lot of fair, settled weather this week to the south and east coast of mainland Spain. For Madrid and northern, western areas there will be rain in the next few days and unsettled weather. This split across the country continues into Christmas weekend but does mean that the Costas, Majorca and Ibiza will all see fine sunny weather with temperatures around 20C. The Canary Islands will be sunny and fine this week with temperatures between 20 to 25C. It looks to become windy on Christmas day with cloud from the west, if a frontal band reaches down from the north. There is plenty of uncertainty in the forecast for western Europe including the UK for Christmas weekend.
Central and southern Germany have been cold and icy with warnings this morning. There has also been freezing rain for eastern Germany and Czechia in the past few days which caused treacherous conditions with widespread black ice. This risk of ice remains in the south where the cold air holds on. Further north, it is already milder and there will be rain with murky conditions.
There will be more fresh snow this week in Finish Lapland to add to the existing covering. There are snow and ice warnings across Finland on Tuesday. The winds fall light later this week but the temperatures also fall away. It will be down to -15C by day and feeling colder as Santa makes his last preparations before the big off this weekend.
If you are travelling in Europe the best place to quickly view warnings is Meteo Alarm which can then lead to the national meteorological services warnings.
Northern Japan has seen blizzard conditions and huge amounts of snow. Hokkaido does get a lot of snow in the winter and has ski resorts but this has been phenomenal.
Record-smashing heavy #snow has been pounding N. Japan's Yamagata prefecture. "In 48 hours, Hijiori had 134cm of snow falling, surpassing its previous December record of 107cm. Shinjo had 89cm, its all-time record and 390% of the normal amount. Shinkansen bullet trains are still running." Sayaka Mori
There are cold warnings with low temperatures and dry air. Tokyo will see some rain but looks fine and bright by the weekend with temperatures around average.
It’s a wet picture for Florida and Disneyworld with thunderstorm and flooding concerns. It looks drier and sunny by the Christmas weekend but cool at only 10C. There are wind chill and winter storm watches for central and northern parts of the US this week. “A surge of Arctic air behind a cold front crossing the U.S. through the week will bring widespread, dangerous wind chill temperatures through much of the central U.S. and a potential flash freeze from the mid-South to the East Coast. A major winter storm will form on this front bringing heavy snow and high winds creating blizzard conditions for parts of the Plains into the Great Lakes.
The storm moves across to eastern states by Friday swinging north into eastern Canada on Christmas Eve. For New York City it looks like some wet and windy weather is on the way before Christmas and then bright and sunny but colder.
Barbados - Further afield and there are showers speckled across Barbados and the Windward islands. The showers ease off slightly later this week and then it is fine with temperatures around 27C.
Australia - Sydney has seen more than 2.5 metres of rain this year. This is double its annual mean of 1.2m and beats the previous annual record of 2194mm from 1950. With some devastating flooding episodes this year Christmas day is looking fine, sunny with 28C. The Bureau of Meteorology, BoM has issued its official Christmas Day forecast with
“most of Australia set for a warm and sunny day. The exception will be north-east New South Wales, much of Queensland and the Northern Territory with isolated thunderstorms expected across those regions.”
Included in Heathrow’s 12 tips of Christmas “Do carry precious gifts in your hand luggage” but liquids over 100ml have to go in the hold. “Do use bubble wrap and thick clothing to protect breakable gifts”. Check that your passport is in date and over the Christmas period, we recommend that passengers arrive at the airport two hours before short-haul flights and three hours before long-haul flights.
There are no Express services to Gatwick and Heathrow on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and there are many other alterations to rail services due to engineering and strikes around the Christmas period.
