Christmas Day 1938 was a white Christmas across many parts of the UK, indeed apart from Christmas Day 1981, it was the deepest and most widespread Christmas snow of the 20th Century. The day itself was largely dry with just the odd snow flurry as most of the UK was under the influence of a ridge from Scandinavia.

Just looking at reports from Europe

Mean pressure at Moscow for Dec '38 was 1036mb (+18mb above mean)

Northern Sweden: 1026mb (+16mb)

Oslo: 1021mb (+11mb)

Icelandic low: 994mb (-4mb below mean)

Siberia recorded temperatures of around -50C during the second week of December.

Lyons: -25C on the 22nd December

Milan: -10.6C on the 25th

Rivers, lakes, canals etc froze across most parts of Europe. Road, rail and air traffic were severely disrupted.

18th-25th December: -1.1

From the 20th December 1938 edition of the Times

Times photos of the snow

From the 21st December edition of the Times

Some Times photos

Excellent post Kev a repeat this year would be just fine

I always enjoy these historical posts

A difficult Christmas in 1938, but how many knew what they would face over the following few Christmases?

Cheers Kevin.

I love the old newspapers clippings and those temperatures all in farenheit.

Great stuff.

Very interesting Kevin, thanks for posting. Now if we can arrange that for this weekend

Not one for me - too 'eastern-focused'; hardly any snow in the west

Agree with the others - these posts are a fantastic read. Very much appreciated.

yup, facinating.  That Map of the Uk and the temps - were they night time temps?  Some places are around -6 to -8.. which if night time  - ok.. but if they were daytime - that would be a serious cold spell.

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/archives/archives.php?mode=2&month=12&day=1&year=1938&map=4&hour=0 

They are the mean temperatures.

Kevin, as a lot of the media stuff from way-back-when tended to be London/SE-related in terms of weather reports (understandable, given the technology of the time), do you have access to archived Manchester Evening News or Liverpool Echo?

I'm afraid not.

The above articles are from the actual paper that I have.

Kevin, I've picked up a fascinating book about the history of my town from 1901-1910 (called Edwardian Witney).

There are a number of articles in the book about bizarre weather events during this decade (including a great Easter blizzard in late April).

Is there an archive of charts that I can have a look at to see the synoptics of the day?

Really interesting book  and would be great to tie this up with the synoptic charts.

Does the archive even go back that far?

Edit - The Great Easter blizzard was around April 24th 1908 if you have a link to that chart that would be great.

I have written an article on this here

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/64411-the-remarkable-snowfalls-of-late-april-1908/ 

Wow thanks Kev, that's fantastic...I will have a good read of that. My book says there were snow drifts several feet high around Witney (so proof to Gooner that sometimes it does snow in my neck of the woods!).

Brilliant link Kevin, thanks a lot.

Thanks Kevin.

Although the rest of the winter of 38-39 was relatively mild, I guess this spell can be seen as a warning of what was around the corner in terms of the sudden switch to much colder winters through the 1940's...

Thanks for your reply, Kevin