The countdown to the holidays is on, and if you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, NOAA has a list of the locations most likely to have one.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report this month that uses climate data to show where it’s most likely there will be snow on the ground for Christmas Day.
The data consist of averages from the past three decades of different types of observations. This includes both the monthly and daily normals of precipitation, temperature, snowfall, heating and cooling degree days, growing-degree days, as well as frost and freeze dates spanning across close to 15,000 different observation sites. Most of them are owned and operated by NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS).
So what constitutes a “white Christmas”? According to NOAA, there needs to be at least one inch (0.03 meters) of snow on the ground on Dec. 25. In the map below, the information comes from the U.S. Climate Normals from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The different colors represent the probability, according to measurements taken between 1991 and 2020 across the United States on Christmas Day, of what regions might have the best and worst chance of having a white Christmas. If your location falls in an area that’s shaded in dark grey, unfortunately, you might have to head to typically colder spots as the probability is below 10%. The best scenario for snow on the ground on Christmas Day would be in a region highlighted in white, where probabilities exceed 90%.
However, just because the historic data instills confidence in what locations will have snow on the ground, it’s all going to come down to what Mother Nature has in store this year on and leading up to Christmas Day.
If there’s a huge snowstorm the day before Christmas, locations that might not typically have snow on the ground could experience a Christmas morning with the grass blanketed in white. For example, in 2009, a cold blast into North Texas brought with it accumulating snow just before the holiday. It remained on the ground into Christmas Day, which was a first for the region since 1926. And in 2023, Portland, Maine, had a wet and not white Christmas with warm air across the region, prohibiting the more likely chances for being a winter wonderland.
May the magical odds of the holiday spirit ever be in your favor this year, so your dreams of a white Christmas can come true!