North East Weather: What is the Met Office forecast for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day?

Christmas isn’t even out of the way yet, but the Met Office has offered its first forecast for what the North East can expect on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

What is the Met Office forecast for the North East this New Year period?

The current medium to long-range forecast runs from Christmas Day until Tuesday, January 3, when bank holidays are over and normality returns to the UK and the Met Office has warned that confidence remains unusually low for this period, although the most probable scenario sees cold conditions for northern areas throughout the whole period.

These cold temperatures are expected to set in for the long run, staying around the North East for the full period from Christmas into the opening days of 2023. These are expected to be below average for the region, which usually experiences average temperature of just under 4°C.

Despite these cold conditions, the weather service cannot see too many issues with rain when 2022 ends and 2023 begins.

Why is the Met Office Christmas forecast so vague initially?

Despite these predictions, the Met Office says that longer-range forecasts are not wholly accurate and as the day gets closer the more accurately the weather service believe it can predict what the weather will be like on any given date.

It is only within five days that the Met Office truly believes it is able to give an accurate representation of a weather forecast at the local level.

When can we expect more specific forecasts for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day?

The Met Office usually offers more specific forecasts in the immediate days before a given date. The weather service will often offer an hour by hour forecast four days in advance and forecasts for every three hours of the two days after that. These more specific forecasts should start from Christmas Day with hour by hour predictions expected to be available from Tuesday, December 27.