It may be December with little more than a week to Christmas but it is practically warm enough to wear T-shirts instead of thick coats, woolly hats and scarves.
The average temperature for this time of year is 6.7C, but the mercury hit 15C in the south-west, and temperatures of 14C to 16C are forecast in several places, especially in the south. In Scotland, temperatures have reached 11C-12C in Aberdeen and Glasgow, compared with a seasonal average of 5.5C.
It has not just been December that has been almost balmy. November was the third warmest on record for the UK as a whole, with mean temperatures (an average of day and night temperatures) 2C above normal.
“For a couple of weeks, warm air has been coming from tropical regions in the south and south-west Atlantic,” said Emma Sharples, a meteorologist from the Met Office.
With just over a week to go, the unseasonably warm weather makes a white Christmas, which the Met defines as one snowflake to be observed falling in the 24 hours of 25 December somewhere in the UK, unlikely.
“With nine days to go, there is not too much detail, but the winds are coming from the south and south-west,” said Sharples. “There may be interludes with wind from different directions bringing some wintry showers on higher ground but a white Christmas ... is not looking likely.”
The warm weather has brought out daffodils in gardens and parks across the UK, when their usual season for flowering is between February and May.
Wirral Bird Club tweeted a photograph of daffodils flowering in Chester.
The weather has gone mad. Daffodils in flower in mid-December in Chester. pic.twitter.com/dQKIGzpXeu
— Wirral Bird Club (@wirralbirdclub) December 15, 2015
Not even the recent flooding in Cumbria could drown out the daffodils, with Kendal Gardening tweeting:
After floods have come the Daffodils! In the Lyth Valley in mid December! Madness! (Apologies forgot to take the pictures, idiot).
— Kendal Gardening (@KendalGardening) December 16, 2015
The last time the UK experienced a white Christmas was 2010. It was unusual, as not only was there snow on the ground at 83% of weather stations – the highest amount ever recorded – but snow or sleet fell at 19% of stations.
There was also a white Christmas in 2009, when 13% of stations recorded snow or sleet falling, and 57% reported snow lying on the ground.
For most parts of the UK, Christmas is only at the beginning of the period when it is likely to snow, according to the Met. Snow is more likely between January and March than in December, with snow or sleet falling an average 3.9 days in December, compared with 5.3 days in January, 5.6 days in February and 4.2 days in March.
White Christmases were more frequent in the 18th and 19th centuries, even more so before the change of calendar in 1752, which effectively brought Christmas Day forward by 12 days.
The Met says climate change has also brought higher average temperatures over land and sea, generally reducing the chances of a white Christmas.
There has been a widespread covering of snow on the ground (where more than 40% of stations in the UK reported snow on the ground at 9am) only four times in the last 51 years.
