stephanie70506

What are the chances of me seeing snow in Paris in December?

Rubicund

No-one knows and it's impossible to guess, so 37.5%.

Seriously though, it's winter and it will be cold, but snow? Who knows? kerouac knows a lot about Paris though.

PatrickLondon

Minimal, I'd have thought, considering that Paris has much the same weather as London, only a bit drier. The last few years we've barely had a winter, more of an extended autumn.

If you want a guaranteed white Christmas, I'd look far further north and east, well away from the Gulf Stream. I'm not sure you could even <i>guarantee</i> it in, say, Vienna, Tallinn, Prague or Krakow, though the chances would be greater.

Christina

very very low, less than 10%. The overage low temp in December is above freezing, also.

quokka

I'd also guess, less than 10%.

The only time I experienced snow in Paris was in mid April...

nytraveler

Very unlikely. Paris temps are usually not cold enough for snow in Dec. It's possible - but even if it happens likely to be only an inch or two and melts the next day. For sure snow in France in Dec you need to head to the Alps.

kerouac

I'd say less than 5%. Yet 3 years ago, we had snow about a half dozen times in December.

kerouac

As for a white Christmas, I just looked it up and the last white Christmas in Paris was in 1986.

flanneruk

In the sense most of us use the term: negligible.

Though Paris is at roughly the same latitude as Calgary, it - like the rest of the Drizzle Belt near NW Europe's Gulf Stream-warmed sea coasts - shares London's climatic warp that gives the region warmer nights between Martinmas and Candlemas than practically anywhere in North America apart from the Gulf Coast and Southern California (Source: US Department of Agriculture)

The complexity of our winter climate means that the poster's question has to be very precisely defined.

The cultural legacy of Charles Dickens and Bing Crosby mean that the British keep more meticulous records of different definitions of White Christmas, though urban Paris appears to have an almost identical snow record to central London.

British bookies pay out on the "White Christmas" bet if a single snowflake is observed landing on the London Met Office's roof between 0000 and 2359 on December 25. But most people define a White Christmas as continuous snow covering from 0000 to 1159 on Dec 25. Significant Xmas Day snow falls are so rare they feature in almost no anecdotes or betting

The criterion for the bookies' definition has been met 38 times in the 52 years. But this has been almost imperceptible to Londoners or Parisians: continuous snow covering on Xmas morning has occurred at more than 40% of UK weather stations just four times in the past 52 years.

Lasting snow cover gets much more likely the further away from the Seine you get in the Paris region. The French Meteo believes there have been 11 occasions since 1900 when there was a covering of over a centimetre throughout Xmas morning in rural Flanders. They do not record how many occasions there were of any snowfall.

There is absolutely no use speculating until the day before you leave for Paris. There is a very high chance of low overnight temps on almost any Xmas Eve and - in urban centres - a very low chance of overnight ground frost or icy pavements (though if you're staying in the banlieue, the likelihood of icy pavements is a lot higher). But this is close to meaningless: what matters is ensuring that your decision about what outerwear, galoshes and sticks you pack is appropriate for your sensitivity to cold and ice and the weather that's being forecast the day you leave home.

Though almost all nights between Martinmas and Candelmas in the Drizzle Belt include temps between -2 and +2 C, the actual temps, precipitation and freezing point vary massively and can usually be predicted only within a day or so.

flanneruk

" the last white Christmas in Paris was in 1986."

Again: a matter of definition.

From the Meteo Paris site:
" Le dernier Noël blanc sur le Nord de la France remonte à 2010, y compris à Paris (. Deux semaines avant, on avait mesuré 11 cm au Parc Montsouris [in the 14th] (soit la plus haute valeur depuis janvier 1987 à égalité avec mars 2005). Plusieurs centaines de passagers avaient passé la nuit de Noël bloqués à Roissy [CDG airport](."

At Xmas 2010, microclimatic differences within the Drizzle Belt were startling. I had to dig myself out for a train journey into London on Xmas Eve, where my lunch companions stared astonished at my winter clothes. Temps after the Xmas Eve midnight service at our country parish church (the roads were too unsafe to go to the nearest Midnight Mass) hit -15: at the church I'd have attended in London, they were +4.

hetismij2

The Eiffel, Ardennes, and southern Netherlands are forecast to get some snow tomorrow.
Extremely early. No guarantee it will actually arrive.
The chances of snow at Christmas are low, and it is impossible to predict this far out.

kerouac

Yes, there is supposed to be snow in France anywhere above 800 meters tomorrow and on Thursday, Paris will hit a high of something like 5°. I won't say that it is unheard of, but if anybody had asked about snow in October, most people would put the probability under 1%.

As for historical snow at Christmas in Paris, it is indeed a matter of definition. There are many times that one corner of the city can have snow unseen in the rest of the city. In my 40 years working in Paris, I also cannot count the number of times that my colleagues trudged into the city talking about (and showing photos) of 10 or 20cm of snow in Versailles, Moret or Aulnay-sous-Bois at their homes that morning when we did not have a single flake in Paris. Generally, Paris is 5° warmer than the surrounding surburbs, and that makes a huge difference. I have lived through certain winters in Paris where temperatures did not go below freezing a single time while it froze regularly in the suburbs. I also have a vivid memory of some time in the 1980's when the temperature in the city remained at about -10° for almost three weeks, and we were walking through trenches in the ice even on the Champs Elysées. I would love to see that again some day. Then again, maybe not.

Stephanie, if you want to see snow at Christmas, be prepared for an impromptu side trip to a place like Strasbourg of Clermont-Ferrand, depending on the weather.

kerouac

of = or

StCirq

Very unlikely, and when it does snow, it tends to last about a half-hour, then melts.

It's really cold in France tonight, though, even here several hundred kms south of Paris.

hetismij2

It's pretty darn cold here in the Netherlands too. We managed a magnificent 8C today and tomorrow the high is a miserable 5C. I can't remember it ever being so cold on my birthday. Snow will be the icing on the cake .

stephanie70506

Wow. Thank you all for replies. I appreciate all of your comments. I don't know why I haven't used this forum as a resource before!
I'm trying to decide what month I want to go to Paris, either December or January, because I love cold weather and snow. I have to think about it. Again, thank you all -- Happy Travels!

denisea

Amazingly several years ago, we were in Paris at Christmas and there was snow (we ate ice cream in the snow in the park behind Notre Dame on Christmas EVe). It was our first Christmas in Paris. As luck would have it, there was also snow in Atlanta on Christmas (still on the ground when we got home)--the first snow at Christmas in 100 years in Atlanta, it did not snow the past 2 years in Paris at Christmas but December is a great time to be in Paris. Lots of pretty store windows and we never tire of it.