The idea of a white Christmas,with snow on the ground on December 25, belongs more to the collective imagination than to recent reality in the Paris region. According to Météo Paris, you have to go back tothe winter of 2010 to find a cold snap and snowfall over a large part of the country, including the Paris region , at this time of year.
But since then, increasingly mild winters have made the appearance of a stable snow cover on December 25 increasingly unlikely. Recent records show winters with few days of frost, rare snowfalls and, when they do occur, often too light to last long on the ground.
The last credible episode of significant snowfall in the plains around Christmas time in the Paris region was in 2010. The snowfall that hit the region that December left 10 to 16 cm of snow in the Paris region, depending on the area, while the Paris-Montsouris station recorded around 11 cm on December 8, 2010, a record level since 1987. But again, it wasn't Christmas Day!
While there have been several snowfalls in central and eastern France, it is in the north of the country that they have been most significant. Between December 17 and 20, 2010, there were several snowfalls in Hauts-de-France, Normandy, and Île-de-France, with several dozen centimeters falling on December 19 in the Paris region! Given the low temperatures, snow was expected to continue falling in some parts of the region on Christmas Eve!
This episode followed several successive cold spells that had created favorable conditions for snow, with low temperatures and cold air coming in from the east, which allowed the snow to stick. Since 2010, despite a few snowfalls such as the 12 cm on February 7, 2018, no December 25th has shown lasting snow on the ground according to records.
With a milder than average climate in recent years, snow rarely arrives in time for Christmas. For today's Parisian residents, a real Christmas in the snow is more of a nostalgic memory for adults than a tradition, which children have sometimes never experienced, unless they go to the mountains.
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