Edinburgh weather: Met Office issues forecast for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day

The weather in Edinburgh around Christmas is typically very cold and locals will already be feeling a bit frost-bit. With de-icing the morning windscreen starting to become a daily chore, many are asking - will there be snow this Christmas?

Using the Met Office’s long term weather forecast, we can find out what the experts predict for Edinburgh this December. In 2021, 6% of weather stations in the UK reported snowfall but as many will testify, there was not a lot to celebrate on the ground.

This is because the Met Office only needs to record a single snowflake falling at one of its designated observation sites to utter the words “white christmas”. So hikers and mountain climbers rejoice - you will be the first to see Scottish snow if it falls.

At the start of the month, conditions are expected to be a little unsettled with showers forecast to come in as soon as this weekend. With temperatures dropping, there is the potential for these showers to become wintery, but this is only expected to affect higher ground.

But what about the rest of December, will there be snow on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day? Here’s the Met Office’s long term forecast for Edinburgh.

Met Office weather forecast for Edinburgh over the Christmas period 

Long-range weather forecasts are known to not be totally accurate so it is difficult to definitively say whether it will be a white Christmas for Edinburgh locals this year. That being said, the Met Office is predicting it to be a frosty one.

According to the Met Office: “Conditions are expected to be more settled than of late, with the potential for high pressure to be located close to the UK, at least at first.” However, it does predict that we could see a return of warm and cold fronts arriving from the west.

While temperatures aren’t expected to be significantly cold, we could see numbers drop at times, “with a risk of overnight frost and fog higher than normal”.