Sledging, snowball fights and unexpected days off school. Or slippery pavements, soaking clothes and being stuck at home.
Snowy weather can feel magical or infuriating, depending perhaps on your time of life, what you need to do that day and…how close it is to Christmas.
Most people would welcome some snowfall in the festive season, even if it’s far from common.
The last official ‘White Christmas’ in East Sussex was almost a quarter of a century ago, as Dan Stroud, Senior Operational Meteorologist at the Met Office, explains: “Traditionally for a White Christmas we have to physically observe a snowflake falling from the sky during Christmas Day itself. The last time we recorded that was as long ago as 2001.
“There was snow on the ground at Christmas in 2010 but that had fallen before Christmas Day and was still hanging around. Before 2001, there was also snow around in 1996, 1993 and 1981.”
A misleading Christmas tradition
Our traditional anticipation of snow at Christmas is, frankly, unrealistic. Most of us know that snowfall is much more common in January and February.
The stubborn idea that snow is Christmas weather probably comes from our collective historical memory.
In 1752, Britain switched to a new calendar (The Gregorian) which shifted the date of Christmas from what would now be 6 January – a time of year when snow was perhaps a little more likely.
More significantly, we passed through a climatic period known as the Little Ice Age during the 16th to early 19th centuries when the climate was cooler and winters were typically much colder than we know today.
This meant people born in the early 1800s would have regularly known cold and snowy Christmases during their childhood.
And one of them was a certain Charles Dickens – the author has done more than anyone to shape our idea of what is ‘traditional’ at Christmas.
The fact is that when snow comes to East Sussex, it’s more likely to come in the new year.
Bad winters in East Sussex
Older residents might remember the intense winter of 1963. In East Sussex there were 15 days of snowfall that winter with 56 centimetres of snow recorded at Bodiam.
A dive into the archives at The Keep (East Sussex’s record office) produces some other chilling images of bad winters – like this shot (below) of a wagon labouring through the ‘great blizzard’ of 1908 in Eastbourne.
Or an even older image, thought to be from around 1890, of a fisherman on snowy Hastings beach.
Snow comes in different types too. Dan Stroud at the Met Office said: “Typically in the UK we tend to get wet, sticky snow but we can sometimes see the dry, powdery type which drifts and tends to be more disruptive. But wet snow can weigh down and damage power lines so that comes with problems too.”
Whichever type was around in 1935, the pond at Falmer had frozen over on Christmas Eve for these skaters to take to the ice.
And, as the snow scenes from Rye Foreign and Guestling Church demonstrate – the East Sussex landscape can look especially beautiful under a white carpet.
Beautiful but tough
Winter can be tough as well as beautiful of course.
If you or someone you know has trouble staying warm at home, you might qualify for a free warm home check or even small grants towards home improvements with heating or insulation through the Keep Warm and Well scheme.
And keeping the roads of East Sussex moving during snow or icy weather is a priority for the team at East Sussex Highways who have a fleet of gritter lorries ready to head out when the temperature plunges.
A changing climate
Because of human-caused climate change which is heating the planet, we can expect to see snow less often.
Met Office data shows that in the 1960s East Sussex had 5.5 days of snowfall on average. By the 2010s, that had fallen to 3.2 days.
Snow at Christmas, already rare, is less likely than ever.
It’s not impossible though. At the time of writing (early December) it’s too soon for the most accurate Christmas forecasts.
However, if you’re a fan of Christmas snow, Dan at the Met Office advises you not to get your hopes up.
“At the moment December looks unsettled but tending to high pressure later in the month. It’s too soon to give the most accurate forecast but if I was a betting man I think I’d expect it to be cold and frosty rather than snowy.”
