A white Christmas is a rare treat in most of Germany at the best of times and – as the the climate warms and weather patterns shift – snow over the holiday season is becoming even less likely.
The cold snap which recently swept through Germany raised hopes that this year might be different.
Mild temperatures are now dominating again, but a change to wintry conditions is still possible from mid-December, according to forecasts.
So keep hoping and, with a bit of luck, maybe this year will bring that magical winter wonderland after all.
What would it take for a white Christmas in Germany?
For Germany to wake up to a snowy Christmas, a few meteorological stars need to align.
“First of all, we need a few days of frost beforehand to cool the ground,” meteorologist Özden Terli told t-online.
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This is tricky at the moment, as “the oceans are so warm that the air masses moving from the warm Atlantic to Germany are bringing increasingly mild temperatures with them”.
A weather phenomenon known as the polar vortex – a swirling mass of cold air over the Arctic – plays a crucial role in whether or not Germany will see a white Christmas. When it’s stable, mild westerly winds dominate, keeping icy air at bay.
For wintry weather to reach Germany, the flow of air within the polar vortex (currently running from Siberia towards Canada) would need to shift. This change could allow cold Arctic air to move south into Central Europe.
In another German media report, meteorologist Jan Schenk recently put the chances of this happening at about 30 percent. He added that long-term forecasts are notoriously unreliable.
But if the latest weather model by the European ECMWF is right, it is indeed more likely that we’ll see milder than average temperatures throughout Germany for the week of December 22nd to 28th – and rain in most places rather than snow.
Which parts of Germany are most likely to see snow around Christmas?
The whole of Germany has only experienced a white Christmas on six occasions since 1881, according to statistics from the German Weather Service (in 1906, 1917, 1962, 1981 and 2010).
But some parts of Germany are considerably snowier than others.
If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, your best bet is still to head for the hills.
The Alps, the edges of the Alps, and elevated regions such as the Ore Mountains, Black Forest, Bavarian Forest or Swabian Alps are most likely to see snow.
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Among Germany’s big cities, Munich stands out as the snowiest, with snow falling on Christmas Eve in 14 out of the last 45 years.
Potsdam comes in second with ten snowy Christmases, followed by Erfurt with nine.
Magdeburg and Stuttgart share fourth place, each with seven white Christmases since 1975.
Cities like Leipzig, Dresden, and Hamburg have seen snow at Christmas six times in the same period, while Hannover, Saarbrücken and Schwerin have had five.
Berlin has only enjoyed four snowy Christmases over the same period, putting it on par with Mainz, Bremen, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main.
After a white Christmas in 1986, Berliners had to wait a whole 14 years before snow lay on the ground on the 24th, 25th and 26th of December.
At the bottom of the list are Kiel and Düsseldorf (three times each since 1975) and Cologne, where it has snowed just twice at Christmas in the last 50 years.
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