Christmas Day 2025 was generally a fairly cold, dry day with sunshine for some and cloud for others, but Jersey reported its first White Christmas (in the sleet/snow falling sense) since 1970. This was caused by a pool of cold continental air that some models had, for a time, forecast to hit the southern half of Britain, but in the end ended up heading westwards through France and just nudging the English Channel.
Christmas Day 1970 also had an "easterly" setup with high pressure to the north and north-east of Britain, but continental Europe was generally colder and so much of England and Wales, particularly from the English Midlands southwards, ended up with snow both falling and lying on Christmas Day. In some areas, snow lay from the 24th to the 27th or 28th. It was generally less cold in Scotland and northern England, where many areas did not see snow on the ground, although many did have sleet or snow falling. Jersey is most prone to getting snow from easterly types, with winds coming in off a cold continent. It is less susceptible to snow from northerlies, as it is well sheltered from that direction by the British Isles.
Subsequent white Christmasses over the British mainland have tended to come from northerly (rather than easterly) weather types, with the most widespread examples of snow cover on Christmas Day having been in 1981, 1995, 2009 and 2010. There have been no widespread examples since 2010, reflecting the general decline in wintry Christmas-New Year periods since then.
The outlook into the New Year has high pressure retrogressing to the north-west of Britain, allowing northerly blasts to head into Europe. It is currently uncertain whether these will directly hit the British Isles, or go out to the east, into the North Sea and central Europe, with Britain just getting scraps on the western flank. Most recent model runs have shown the second scenario, but this morning's ECMWF run (as of 27 December 2025) had quite a potent northerly hitting Britain on 2-3 January and further northerlies after that. A generally cold dry outlook is looking probable, but how cold it will be, and whether it will be cold enough to give snow for some, is uncertain.
This difficulty getting air masses over to Britain that are cold enough for widespread snow is happening against a backdrop of another year of record warmest temperatures. Both for the UK as a whole, in a Met Office temperature series from 1884, and in the Central England Temperature series from 1659, it is looking set to be the warmest year. There was some uncertainty over this previously because of potential for it to get very cold between Christmas and the New Year, but it has proved to not be cold enough to stop the record from being broken. The new temperature record is coming primarily from the spring and summer, both of which were record warm averaged over the UK. Averaged globally, 2025 is looking set to not be record warm, but it will probably be the third warmest year globally behind 2023 and 2024, in spite of the presence of a weak La Nina event in the Pacific Ocean, which normally reduces the global mean temperature a little.
For the UK as a whole, 2025 is also officially the sunniest year on record. It may well not seem it, however, as the back end of this year has been unremarkable sunshine wise, and October in particular was generally dull. The record sunshine came chiefly from the spring, which averaged over the UK surpassed even the record breaking sunny "lockdown spring" of 2020. There was some regional variation: in the south-west in particular, where spring 2025 was not as sunny relative to average as in other regions, 2020 still stands as the sunniest spring on record, but in most other regions, 2025 surpassed it. Summer 2025 was also generally sunnier than average for the UK, as were January and September 2025, but not exceptionally so.
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