Where does it get cold for Christmas and where does snow fall?

That is why there is a struggle in heaven to the last.

"It is comparable to a battle of the giants," said meteorologist Martin Jonas from the weather forecast center of the German Weather Service (DWD) on Thursday in Offenbach.

Two high pressure areas and two low pressure areas are vying for supremacy.

"Such a constellation is called a four-pressure field," explained the meteorologist: four pressure centers are located opposite one another at the corners of an imaginary square, with the two lows and highs each facing diagonally.

One team tries to bring polar air to us, the other wants to prevent it.

"In such a four-way pressure field, the rivals are quite unforgiving," said Jonas.

"When the air masses wrestle, sometimes the cold and sometimes the warm air can move forward a little."

Rain could turn into snow in some areas

And that then has an impact on whether it rains or snows.

“When the cold air moves south, the rain turns into snow at the air mass limit.

When the warm air moves north, the snow turns into rain, ”explained the meteorologist.

The dangerous thing is that it can easily freeze rain with appropriate slippery.

On Christmas Eve it looks like "the cold air is shifting forward," as Jonas said.

This means that the rain should turn into snow, especially in a strip from Saxony to Westphalia.

A shift to the northeast could dominate again on Saturday.

There is then a risk of slipperiness from the northwest to Upper Franconia.

Weather split expected

So on Friday it will snow in the northern half, in the south precipitation will come as rain from the sky.

From the Rhineland to Upper Franconia and the Ore Mountains, the DWD expects little rainfall.

The maximum temperature in the northeast is between 1 and 4 degrees, otherwise 4 to 10 degrees.

On Saturday and Sunday, the DWD expects a split in the weather: over the southern half and the west, thick clouds and often rainy, from Saxony to Westphalia sometimes heavy snowfalls and freezing rain in places.

The maximum values ​​are here at two to ten degrees.

In the north it will be sunny and dry at minus five to zero degrees.