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11th December 2023
12:06pm GMT
The Met Office has said there is a chance of some parts of the UK having a white Christmas this year.
Meteorologists have said the possibility of temperatures plummeting towards late December is increasing.
The Met Office's current official forecast for December 25 - January 8 reads: "More likely to be unsettled compared to the preceding settled spell with bands of rain crossing the UK with brighter conditions and showers in between.
"The chance of a colder spell of weather, with hazards such as snow and ice, does increase later in December and into the New Year period."
However, the forecaster adds that conditions are "more likely to remain generally mild and wet" in general.
It's much more likely that the UK experiences snow in early 2024, from January to March.
The Met Office says a white Christmas is for one snowflake to be observed falling in the 24 hours of December 25 somewhere in the UK.
This usually happens at a handful of weather stations. Around half of the years since 1960 have seen at least 5 per cent of the network record snow falling on Christmas Day.
But it's rare there is widespread snow on Christmas Day, which is defined as more than 40 per cent of UK weather stations reporting snow.
The last time this happened was 2010, when there was snow on the ground at a record 83 per cent of stations.
This was only the fourth time the country has experienced a widespread white Christmas since 1960, with the other three occasions being 1981, 1995 and 2009.
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