Christmas

Christmas Days 1836-2023

It’s not the first time I’ve done this, but what the hell, here are all the Christmas Day 1200 UTCUTC Coordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). MSLPMSLP Mean sea level pressure is the pressure at sea level, or, when measured at a given elevation on land, the station pressure reduced to sea level assuming an isothermal layer at the station temperature. and 500 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar GPHGPH Geopotential height (GPH) is a vertical coordinate that represents the height of a pressure surface above mean sea level. reanalysis charts, from CFSCFS The Climate Forecast System or coupled forecast system (CFS) is a medium to long range numerical weather prediction and a climate model run by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) to bridge weather and climate timescales. Version 2 became operational as CFSv2 in 2011. and NOAANOAA NOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather., from 1836 to 2023, courtesy of Wetterzentrale. If you’re reading this in December, and it’s before the 25th, have a very Merry Christmas 😁

Christmas, Reanalysis

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Schizo Christmases

For some reason weather types occasionally seem to flip over the Christmas period, a cold spell at Christmas can sometimes come to an abrupt end by New Year, and sometimes what looks like a milder Christmas, can suddenly give way to much colder weather as we get into the New Year. Out of curiosity, and with nothing much else to do on a rainy day, I decided to duplicate and refactor my Christmas viewer to produce mean anomalies (or temperatures) from the CETCET Central England Temperature daily series for the periods before (22nd to 28th December), and after (29th December to 4th January) to see what I could find.
As you can see from the results, Christmas 1866 was one of the most schizoSchizo A combining form from the ancient Greek meaning 'I split'. Christmases Central England has seen since 1772, starting mild, with anomalies of +2.1°C, but becoming very cold, with anomalies of -6.5°C into the New Year.
The Christmas of 1796 was another classic, this time starting very cold, with anomalies of -8.1°C, but then turning much milder with anomalies of +1.4°C into the New Year.
The most recent example of a schizo Christmas in Central England was that of 2010, Christmas that year was very cold, with anomalies of -6.8°, but New Year, although still cold was much milder than Christmas, with anomalies of -1.0°C.

CET, Christmas, Software

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The coldest and mildest Christmases in Central England since 1772

I revisited some code I wrote many years ago and smartened it up a bit, it fills a grid with mean temperatures and anomalies for the Christmas period (21 December to 4th of January) from the daily CETCET Central England Temperature series which started in 1772. It simply calculates a mean temperature and anomaly for each year for that period and then adds it to the grid.
The coldest Christmas by far was that of 1870 with a mean temperature of -3.6°C and anomaly of -8.1°C. All the cold Dickens Christmases of 1853, 1860, 1890 & 1892 are in top 20. One unusual cold Christmas that I noticed was the forgotten Christmas of 1961 (#4), which surprisingly was fractionally colder than that of 1962 (#8). The most recent cold Christmas besides those were the ones in 1992 (#18), 1996 (#19), 2010 (#20) and 2009 (#31).
The mildest Christmas since 1772 in Central England was that of 2015, which just edged 2023 from the number one spot, with a mean temperature of 8.7°C, which was 4.2°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Five Christmases from the 21st century feature in the top ten mildest since 1772.
The coldest Christmas day was that of 1796 (-10.8°C), the mildest 2023 (10.7°C). All in all a fascinating little addition to my Daily CET application. I’ll give you two guesses to where this one will end up.

CET, Christmas, Software

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Easter Day Christmas Day temperature comparison

I saw someone mention this on Twitter/X yesterday, so I thought that I’d take a closer look.
A comparison between the maximum temperatures on [A] Easter Day 2024 and [B] Christmas Day 2023. As you can see it was colder on Easter Day in the southeast compared to Christmas Day, but much warmer in Scotland on Easter Day that it was on Christmas day. Not a lot of people know that. 😉

Christmas, Easter, Temperature

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Christmas Days 1998-2022

Courtesy UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy & Wetterzentrale

You can see how over the last 25 years the analysis from the UKMO has got more and more complicated. This is more than likely due to the fact that the analysis is now done using NWPNWP Numerical weather prediction uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. fields and improved satellite imagery, rather than just surface observations anymore. It’s also shows the influence of Mr Occlusion over the last five years or so. Christmas day itself is usually a mobile affair and sometimes very cyclonic (1999 & 2013). Now and then its anticyclone (2006, 2008 & 2010) and one or two where its blocked (2009 & 2021). Just a rather cyclonic and boring SW’ly once again in 2022.

Analysis, Christmas, UKMO

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