It was as far from a White Christmas as it could be.

Huddersfield families enjoyed the big day with a morning of blue skies and bright sunshine, with rain later in the day.

And even though the Met Office issued a “Yellow Warning” of snow for Boxing Day, the town escaped any disruption to festive plans.

Forecasters had warned of an area of rain, sleet and snow spreading eastwards across a large swathe of the country during Boxing Day before clearing during the evening and overnight.

A large swathe of central Britain was warned to be ready for snow as a cold snap brings freezing temperatures in the lead-up to the New Year.

The Met office upgraded its cold weather alert to Level 3 amber, the second highest, saying there was a 90% chance of severe cold, ice or snow in parts of England between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve.

Temperatures could also drop as low as -10C (14F) in some places at the start of next week.

They warned that several centimetres of snow was likely even at low levels, especially in a swathe through Wales and the Midlands, where there was the potential for an amber warning, and also for snowfalls on the nothern edge, which hit Huddersfield and the Pennines.

Kirklees Council gritted priority routes on Christmas Day but the town escaped relatively unscathed despite the warnings.

Huddersfield weatherman Paul Stevens had warned of wind and rain and said: “This winter we will get snow but we are not talking the amounts seen in those familiar years of 1963, 1947 and 1978.

“There will be some cold snaps and we might get a couple of what I would call disruptive days but nothing more than a typical winter.”

The Examiner files have revealed how different things were back in the 50s and 60s.

Heavy snow was a regular feature in the winters of the early 1950s and the early 1960s, with drifts feet deep.

Some iconic photographs show Huddersfield Town players enjoying a training session in the snow with others showing volunteers trying to clear snow from the pitch at the club’s famous Leeds Road ground ahead of a December fixture back in 1950.