STV's Sean Batty: Warm air and rain on the way - but don't rule out a white Christmas in Scotland just yet

If you’re spending the weekend putting up decorations or Christmas shopping, you might want to have the song Mele Kalikimaka on repeat instead of White Christmas.

Now it won’t quite be Hawaii, but it’ll be exceptionally mild.

Over the next few days, our air will be coming all the way from north Africa and the Canaries. And while this is a warm air flow, it will be travelling a long way across the Atlantic and picking up a lot of moisture, which means a lot of rain for the west.

That’s why an amber weather warning has been issued for the west Highlands, with a risk of as much as 200mm of rain in some spots – thoroughly miserable and definitely not Christmassy.

Temperatures in Aberdeenshire and Moray could reach near 15C this weekend, which won’t be a million miles away from all-time records for December. The most likely records to be broken will be the overnight ones, with temperatures staying up, in some spots, in the low teens.

But thankfully this mild and very wet weather won’t last too long, with a return to colder air later next week.

On my Wednesday update I said there was a huge amount of uncertainty for Christmas itself, but did say that colder weather and snow would arrive later next week.

While not as extreme as was being shown by some of the models the other day, cold air will move into the north of Scotland on Thursday, with showers turning increasingly to snow.

This is where the divergence starts as some forecast models push this cold air south across the whole of Scotland by Friday and through the weekend of December 23 and 24, but other major players push milder air back in – so what does that mean?

Well, it means the uncertainty continues beyond midweek next week, but there is still a decent drop in temperatures – at least to something more normal for December!

At this stage, I would still prepare for snow in the north of the country in the days leading up to Christmas Day, with a risk of some heavier falls at times. Further south, for the likes of Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh, I would say the snow risk is low at the moment, but it will still turn colder.

For Christmas Day, it’s still too far out to pin any details on it yet, especially given the volatility in the current computer models. But going with the changes in the last few days, I’d have to downgrade snow chances for the big day, but you’ll be glad to know I’m definitely not writing it off just yet.

See you on Monday for the next update. Have a great weekend watching Home Alone as the weather takes a very grinchy turn, and keep on dreaming of those big flakes for Christmas!