How likely is it that we’ll have a white Christmas? The NOAA has some clues:
It’s a fairly safe guess that some parts of the country will get the white Christmas we all dream about — or dread, depending on vacation travel schedules. An interactive map from NOAA, the National Oceanic, and Atmospheric Administration shows which areas, historically, have the first-rate likelihood of a white Christmas.
Here in Pennsylvania, a white Christmas isn’t always definitely unlikely but it’s no longer all that common, either.
NOAA’s “Historical Probability of a White Christmas” map shows the climatological probability of at least 1 inch of snow on the ground on Dec. 25 in the contiguous United States. Or, take a seem to be at the interactive map to get a better concept of the historic likelihood of measurable snow in cities in Pennsylvania.
Depending on what part of the suburbs you’re from, or if you’re right in the city proper, the possibilities of a white Christmas in Philadelphia and its surrounding towns are between 10 and 18 percent, in accordance to the NOAA.
Of course, nothing beats the real weather forecast to predict whether it will be snowy at Christmastime. The map suggests only the climatological likelihood of a white Christmas. By Dec. 18, we have a correct concept of the Christmas forecast.
“The conditions this year might also fluctuate widely from these probabilities because the weather patterns current will determine if there is snow on the ground or if snow will fall on Christmas Day,” NOAA said. “These probabilities are useful as a guide only to show where snow on the floor is greater likely.”
Based on that, if you’re set on snow at Christmas, your nice bets are in most of Idaho, Minnesota, Maine, Upstate New York, the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Aspen, Colorado, is one of about a dozen locations that boast a 100 percent historic chance of a white Christmas.
Some southern states and cities nearly never get a white Christmas, even though New Orleans received its first white Christmas in 50 years in a 2004 Christmas Eve snowstorm that also brought measurable snow to Brownsville, Texas, and its twin city of Matamoros, Mexico. In 1989, parts of Florida and North Carolina were walloped with 15 inches of snow simply before Christmas.
History suggests there’s a less than 10 percent chance those states will see measurable snow on Christmas this year.
NOAA based totally its map on the 1981–2010 Climate Normals, which are the present-day three-decade averages of a number of climatological measurements. As NOAA explains it, the dataset includes daily and monthly normals of temperature, precipitation, snowfall, heating and cooling degree days, frost/freeze dates, and growing degree days calculated from about 9,800 National Weather Service stations.
If you are interested in the local weather normals in Eastern Pennsylvania, use the interactive map or search tool from the National Centers for Environmental Education, previously acknowledged as the National Climatic Data Center.
By the way, the idea of a white Christmas in the United States is regularly associated with American composer Irving Berlin’s classic, “White Christmas,” recorded by way of Bing Crosby and others. As the “White Christmas” backstory goes, the outstanding American composer wrote “White Christmas” while announcing at an inn in southern California in 1940, and re-imagined the glistening treetops and different wintery points of interest from his childhood in New York.
Other artists who have extraordinarily covered the timeless Christmas music include Otis Redding, The Supremes, Lady Gaga, The Drifters and Elvis Presley.
