cheese

Yeah, it’s why the 1961-1990 climatic period was unusually cold if anything. The winter of 1986-87 was particularly brutal in the Nordic countries - Helsinki had a maximum temperature of -32C on the 9th of January. Nowadays it would be more or less impossible to get conditions that cold.

Indeed. We have had 119mm so far here - that’s 206% of the average December rainfall for this area (57mm). It’s also our third month of the year to exceed 100mm (our wettest month gets 58mm on average). It has been very, very wet few months & a drying out is desperately needed.

Very close strike in South Leeds

Can confirm, thunder and lightning here. CGs included. A thunderstorm in December is the last thing I expected!

We have thunder and lightning here!

Although it will probably turn out to be a mild winter here (quelle surprise), in Scandinavia (especially southern Scandi) it looks quite chilly. December has been colder than average, and any mild periods have been short-lived. The forecast looks cold too. You can see that quite well with the Baltic Sea ice chart, it's pretty advanced for December. Sea ice already forming around Helsinki and Stockholm, as well as the islands of Estonia - usually that happens in January-March.

Anywhere with an oceanic climate can experience that. There’s nothing unique about the British climate. Take Melbourne for example - they had a maximum temperature of 18.7C on June 5th, and a maximum temperature of 17.0C on December 2nd. We are not special for occasionally getting warmer days in winter than summer.

Tbf that applies to many more countries than just the UK.

Wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw record breaking cold again in the UK. Might as well embrace the change and plant a load of palm trees. Add a bit of greenery to an otherwise dull winter landscape!

A very contrasting Christmas Eve across Europe. Sweden and Norway look particularly cold. Mild for France, the UK, Germany, Denmark and Benelux.

Yes I’m not sure why today’s wind has been ignored. UKV shows gusts approaching 70mph here.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day look dry here according to the Met Office.

Yeah, the rain shadow has been in full swing the past 24 hours. It’s been very notable on the radar. I don’t agree that our default weather is wet. Maybe in western areas that’s true but here our wettest month of the year only gets 58mm of rain on average, and only 4 months of the year average more than 10 days of rain (over 1mm). Our average annual rainfall is only 603mm with 114 days of rain >1mm. Eastern and southern Britain are far more dry than wet. The radar image above is pretty typical this time of year. Cloudy is definitely the default though. Lack of sunshine is my main issue with the our climate.

Christmas Eve is looking very mild, especially to the east of high ground. 16C possibly? To be honest, I don't mind days like today - mild, breezy, dry.

Just realised we’ve had 54mm here so far this month - that’s essentially our December average rainfall in the first ten days of the month. Can we please get a drier-than-average month already?

We’re talking about highs of -12C though. If that was widespread across the UK (rather than a few isolated frost hollows), I find it hard to believe our energy grid wouldn’t be in meltdown. Our infrastructure struggles to cope at the best of times.

That level of cold here would probably put major stress on the energy grid. Think what happened in Texas a few winters ago.

A maximum temperature of -12C in Stockholm today. You can only imagine the chaos if we had conditions like this here.

A low of -3.5C this morning. Every day this month has fallen below freezing.

Cold & wet is the nightmare scenario.

The shortest here was probably 2016 - we had lying snow on 29 April 2016, and on 9 November 2016.

About 3cm here, nothing to shout about but still nice to look at. We didn’t see any settling snow until March last winter so it’s a good start. The precipitation to the south seems very advanced. It’s turning to snow from around Nottingham northwards according to Wunderground

Already down to -1.4C here

Posted on the NW regional thread.

Beautiful sunny day here, avoided the freezing fog. Currently -0.2C. Frost hasn't melted in the sun.