Wishes for a white Christmas are growing as the holiday inches closer. Recent cold blasts in the eastern half of the United States have many hoping the pattern will be favorable for a blanket of snow on Christmas morning, but that may not be the case for much of the Lower 48.
So what is a white Christmas? As The Weather Channel reports, it occurs when there’s at least 1 inch of snow on the ground on Christmas morning. It doesn’t have to be snowing on the actual holiday for that to happen. A trace of snow also doesn’t count.
White Christmas 2024 Forecast
It’s no surprise that the best chance for at least an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas morning will be in some of the higher elevations of the West. There is also a good chance of a white Christmas from North Dakota into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as well as parts of northern New England.
A colder pattern is expected to return to the eastern half of the U.S. leading up to Christmas, but a widespread snowstorm doesn’t look likely. The warmer trend in the West and a storm track farther north closer to the Canadian border may limit snow cover in the region’s lower elevations.
According to CNN Weather, early forecasts indicate temperatures could max out around 10 to 15 degrees above normal for much of the country on Christmas Day. It’s a forecast reminiscent of last Christmas for many, which came amid the warmest winter on record in the US.
But the country could be split in two by warmth and cold in the run up to the big day. Unseasonably warm conditions will dominate the western half of the US — including Alaska and Hawaii — while the eastern half will be quite cold until Christmas, according to the Climate Prediction Center.
Even though it could be cold in the East, it’s also expected to be much drier than normal from next weekend through the holiday, conditions that should be in place across much of the Lower 48, according to the center. That’s bad news for snow lovers.
If you’re disappointed at this news, chin up: it’s too soon to pinpoint exactly which areas will be dry or see storms, so meteorologists are saying that some white Christmas dreams could stay alive until the forecast is fully in focus.
How Typical Is A White Christmas?
Based on averages from 1991 to 2020, there isn’t much territory outside the Mountain West, the far northern tier and northern New England where the odds of a white Christmas are higher than 50%.
Last year, just 17.6% of the Lower 48 experienced a white Christmas. This was the lowest percentage since records began in 2003. Outside of the West’s higher elevations, there was an area of snow in the Central and Northern Plains and a few spots in the interior Northeast.
In 2022, 53% of the Lower 48 experienced a white Christmas, the highest percentage since 2009. Much of the West, Midwest and interior Northeast were covered in snow. This was mostly due to Winter Storm Elliott which brought widespread snow and bitterly cold temperatures.
On average, about 38% of the Lower 48 has snow on the ground on Christmas, according to 21 years of data compiled by the NOHRSC. Since 2003, those percentages have varied widely from year to year, from 17.6% in 2023 to a whopping 63% of the contiguous U.S. in 2009.
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