Experiencing a Christmas Eve in the snow is not for this year. To the great despair of Christmas movie fans, there will be no no snow in the plains on December 24 and 25, 2023. The temperatures even promise to be very mild for the season. “The first trends show that Christmas this year will be very sweet, estimated at 4 degrees above normal 1991-2020″, declared Météo France in its bulletin. Same observation for the Weather Channel which notably predicts 9 degrees in the morning for the capital and Strasbourg, 11 degrees in Lille or La Rochelle, and even 17 degrees in the afternoon in Perpignan. On Monday, December 25, the French will also wake up to mild temperatures which will exceed 8 degrees everywhere. In the afternoon, they could even reach 17 degrees in the South.
No snow in the plains, the fault of climate change
If France has been swept by numerous storms and experienced record flooding, particularly in Pas-de-Calais and Charente, instability is expected to persist. After an anticyclone which allowed the decline, precipitation will slowly return through the north-east of France, Sunday December 24, 2023. The rest of the country should experience a dry New Year’s Eve, with sunshine in places, particularly in the South. On Monday December 25, 2023, the rain will arrive through Normandy, Hauts-de-France and Brittany. But Météo France warns that snow will not be there. “If the popular imagination often associates snow with Christmas, it has always been rare during this period. With climate change, episodes of snow in the plains have been less frequent since the 1980s“she explained on X (ex-Twitter).
For example, the city of Besançon, accustomed to snowy episodes in winter, lost an average of 8 days per year of snowfall. between the period 1961-1990 and 1990-2020. The city has not had a snowy Christmas since 2010. And 2023 should be no exception. A thirteenth Christmas in a row without snow, unheard of since 1949, according to Météo France. You will have to climb to altitude in the Alps or Pyrenees to experience a “White Christmas”. And that’s not about to change. According to the meteorological site, the increase in temperatures makes snowy episodes rarer in favor of rain, and contributes to the snow on the ground quickly melting.