In a week is Christmas eve, and on the outside it looks since the days of dark grey. How big are the chances for a white Christmas?

the probability is, Statistically, about 15 percent, because a white Christmas in Berlin for about seven years. The meteorological Definition is that on all three days, at least an inch of snow. The one we had last 2010.

Then we would once again turn!

it doesn’t work unfortunately. Between 1986 and 2000, for example, we had in Berlin at all, never a white Christmas. Incidentally, this was the largest gap in the past few decades.

chief meteorologist Jörg Riemann in the “Weather factory” in Tempelhof.Photo: Stefan Jacobs

And what about 2018?

Exclude, I would not, especially since you can do the weather. Although it will be next week, only once a little milder, but the weather models show the cool down afterwards. The came exactly at the right Moment.

But is not white from the cold alone. Where do we get snow?

According to the Textbook would have to either draw a the Atlantic deep to the Baltic States and to the blades on the back of cold, damp North sea air via Scandinavia to us. The Alternative is dry cooling, which flows from Russia to us and here are a mild, humid Mediterranean air meets. The cools then condenses, the moisture and snow falls. As of 2010, as it is not going to stop.

This was the famous Berlin-is-not – Haiti-Winter with a week long smoothness. The conditions at the end of the record year of 2018 since in the meantime re-ordered, as it says in the Textbook?

Only partially. The High with the greatest cooling is currently over Greenland. Only very gradually it moves via Iceland towards Spitzbergen, where he’s listening to. This is also for the Arctic is important, in the form finally new sea ice.

This is nice for the polar bears and the world’s climate, but it helps the Berlin Christmas dreamers little. You will understand why the cliché is from the deep snow of Christmas is so strong?

It may be due to the fact that many of our Christmas stories and images in the years prior to 1850, i.e. during the so-called Little ice age. Moreover, from the Second world war to the 1960s, many of the winters were very cold. From this time, older people are likely to still have the image of a white Christmas in your head. In addition, you remember the unusual weather is already much longer than on this grey La-La, with temperatures just above zero degrees, as we have it currently. But that is just the Normal for this time of year. So winter is here, experience the air above Russia and Scandinavia is cooled in accordance with later, when more. It is just a bit too warm.

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Christoph Stollowsky

Jörg Riemann is a meteorological instructor at the Tempelhof-based “Weather factory”, which also advises the winter service of the BSR.