Will there be snow on Christmas in Switzerland in 2023?
As Christmas Day is approaching, weather experts in Switzerland can now give a pretty good idea of whether there will be snow for the kids in the mountains this year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look likely for most places.
No snow in Swiss cities for Christmas 2023
According to MeteoNews, people in most Swiss cities and regions will wake up to a brownish-green landscape instead of a snowy one on Christmas morning. The weather is expected to be relatively mild, humid, and windy before and during Christmas, ruling out any chance of snow in the lower areas. The forecasters expressed their disappointment about this.
After a few days of expected turbulent weather, with flood and snow warnings issued across the country, the snow level is predicted to be between 1,000 and 1,300 meters above sea level. This means that places below this altitude, including major Swiss cities, will be too warm to have snow for the holidays. Instead, cities like Zurich, Geneva, Bern, and Lausanne will experience temperatures between 9 and 12 degrees Celsius on Christmas. In Lugano, it might even reach 15 degrees on December 24, and the weather will be sunny for most of the week, making it a good time to watch the Ursids meteor shower. In the northern part of the Alps, the weather will be cloudy, with some patches of sunshine expected on December 25.
White Christmases are becoming rare in Switzerland
Unfortunately, MeteoNews mentioned that having a White Christmas—defined as having at least one centimeter of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on December 24, 25, and 26—is becoming increasingly uncommon in Swiss cities. The last White Christmas in Zurich was in 2003, and it has become a rare event in Bern (2008), Lucerne (2010), and St. Gallen (2017). Basel and Geneva haven’t seen snow at Christmas since 1986!
When asked if the decreasing occurrence of White Christmases is due to climate change, MeteoNews gave a very diplomatic (and very Swiss) answer: while it’s “not possible to determine whether the low frequency of white Christmases in recent years is due to chance or global warming… we can assume that white Christmases in the lower areas will become increasingly rare if average temperatures continue to rise.”
