Flashback to 2000: It was white all right

There has only been a widespread Christmas Day covering of snow on the ground – that is, where more than 40 per cent of weather stations in the UK reported snow on the ground at 9am – four times since 1960. Those years were 1981, 1995, 2009 and 2010.

And if the predictions about global warming are right, then white Christmases are going to be increasingly rare until, conceivably, there will come a time – admittedly a long way off yet, but not all that long for southern Britain – when Britons can live their lives without ever seeing one, and they become the stuff of myth and legend.

Already we have experienced some Shropshire winters in which there has been little or no snow at all throughout the whole winter season for those who do not live on higher ground.

If you were around at the turn of the century (that's the 20th and 21st centuries we're talking about) a whole host of white Christmases turned up one after the other, because there were white Christmases in 1999, 2000, and 2001.

Hold on, you say, didn't you earlier pick out only 1981, 1995, 2009, and 2010? Bear with us as we will explain, as it's all to do with how white Christmases are defined.

Here we're concentrating on our chosen year of 2000, and if you remember Christmas Day in Shropshire that year you may now be scratching your head, because you don't recall 2000 being a white Christmas.

Here's what the Met Office says about what counts as a white Christmas: "For many people, a white Christmas means a complete covering of snow, ideally falling between midnight and midday on December 25.

"However, the definition used most widely, notably by those placing and taking bets, is for a single snow flake (perhaps among a mixed shower of rain and snow) to be observed falling in the 24 hours of December 25."

In other words, it doesn't have to be a magical winter wonderland scene to be classed as a white Christmas, and that single falling snowflake could be anywhere in the UK.

Nevertheless on Christmas Day in 2000, which was a Monday, there was a dusting of lying snow on the hills of south Shropshire, even though in other parts of the county people didn't get to see any.

The Shropshire Star reported on Boxing Day: "Parts of the region enjoyed a white Christmas, with flurries of snow in parts of Shropshire and Mid Wales... On Christmas Day people woke to a dusting of snow near Minsterley, and the hilltops of Powys had snow.

"Snow fell throughout the area late on Christmas Eve, but only stuck on higher ground."

Unfortunately, because people generally don't work on Christmas Day, we can't bring you one of our photographer's pictures of the 2000 Christmas Day snow as proof.

Because of the definition of what constitutes a white Christmas, bookmakers nursed a financial headache that year, as Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham were all dusted with Christmas Day snow, forcing the bookies to pay out on the traditional bet for the third time in five years.

For Shropshire, there was not a long wait in 2000 for more serious snow, which arrived early on December 28.

However we're going to have to dismiss 2000 as a "proper" white Christmas for Shropshire, because of the absence of widespread lying snow that all Salopian children could enjoy.

For a more satisfying white Christmas for Shropshire we can look to 2004, which was the first one since 1981 in the county. Snow, proper snow, started falling in the evening.

Or 2010, which is said by the Met Office to have been the last widespread white Christmas in the UK, when there was lying snow in Shropshire on Christmas Day but none actually fell. It was suitably cold for the festive season. The Christmas Eve/Christmas Day overnight temperature recorded at Shawbury was minus 16C (3F) and overall it was the coldest December since records began in 1910.

The last decade has seen some notably mild Christmas Days. For instance, 2015 saw the warmest December for England and Wales since records began, with UK-wide temperatures averaging 8C and the UK experiencing a virtual complete lack of frost, according to the Met Office.

And last year? There was nothing to report on the white Christmas front in Shropshire, but it was still technically a white Christmas in the UK, with six per cent of weather stations recording snow falling, although only four per cent reporting any lying snow.