Your Historical Odds Of A White Christmas

Many dream of a white Christmas this time of year, but history has shown it's not as common as you might think in areas that typically see snow each winter.

How it's defined: It turns out meteorologists have a strict definition for purposes of statistics. A white Christmas is defined as having at least 1 inch of snow on the ground Christmas morning.

It's snow cover, not falling snow, that counts. So, if there's no snow on the ground in the morning, and an inch of snow falls that afternoon or evening, it doesn't count as a white Christmas. Think of it as like unwrapping another present when you open the curtains and see snow on the ground that morning, if you're one who loves snow, that is.

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How typical is it: The map below shows the locations with a historical chance of a white Christmas in any given year. The chances are based on averages from 1991 through 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%.

It varies a lot: NOAA has tracked daily national snow cover in the U.S. since 2003. The average Christmas morning snow cover blanketed 36% of the Lower 48 states from 2003 through 2024.

But as is the case for any particularly day in the winter season, snow cover on Christmas morning has varied widely over the past 22 years from a low of just under 18% coverage two years ago in 2023 to a peak of 63% coverage in 2009.

The more widespread the snowier and persistently colder the pattern leading up to Christmas, the more that will experience a white Christmas.

What happened last year: Last Christmas snow cover was below average, with only 26% of the country having snow on the ground, according to NOAA.

However, for those lucky enough to be in the city for the holidays, New York's Central Park had its first white Christmas in 15 years.

City Specific White Christmas History

Now let's take a in-depth look at white Christmas historical statistics. These include the yearly percent chance, based on 1991-2020 average data, the number of white Christmases in each city's historical record, the last time it happened and how much snow was on the ground when it last occurred.

Northeast

This one may surprise you a bit.

Snow cover isn't all that common in late December in the mid-Atlantic and Interstate 95 corridor from New York southward.

Philly, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. haven't had a white Christmas in over 15 years. In fact, 2009 — and 1966 — had the most snow on the ground for any Christmas on record in Washington, D.C. (7 inches).

New England

Back to a place with few surprises. Expect a white Christmas most years in northern New England.

Burlington, Vermont, once had 32 inches of snow cover 55 years ago on Christmas morning, 1970.

But in southern New England, not so much. Sometimes the very same storms that bury upstate New York and northern New England in feet of snow deliver mainly rain to southeast New England.

Boston once had a record Christmas snow depth of 11 inches 30 years ago in 1995. But they haven't had a white Christmas officially since 2009.

Midwest

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the Great Lakes snowbelts, a white Christmas is almost a lock each year.

But that wasn't the case in 2023, as we alluded to earlier. The stark, snowless map of Christmas 2023 was one of the strangest things we saw in 2023.

Again, perhaps you thought these average chances would be higher in notorious winter cities like Chicago. But the Windy City's chance is historically 1-in-3, and that last happened three years ago.

Plains

Last year was a pretty good example of what to expect in the Plains.

It was a white Christmas in Minnesota and parts of the Dakotas, but not elsewhere in the Great Plains.

Some Plains cities that have been quite snowy from late November into early December typically have a less than 40% chance of a white Christmas, including De Moines, Omaha and Kansas City.

Perhaps they'll break that brown Christmas streak this year.

West

Outside of the mountains and Alaska, there weren't many other locations that had a white Christmas in 2024.

As you can see in the graphic below, larger cities such as Denver and Salt Lake City actually have less than a coin flip chance each Christmas.

The Mile High City did have a record 2-foot snow depth in 1982, but that was at the expense of a historic Christmas Eve blizzard which snarled holiday travel in the area.

Portland and Seattle each had a white Christmas in 2017 and 2008. That historic 2008 event was a record Christmas snow cover at Portland International Airport (10 inches) and tied the record at SeaTac Airport with 1965 (4 inches).

If you really can't get enough snow on Christmas, Fairbanks, Alaska, once had a record 39-inch holiday snow cover in 1970.

Yes, Even In The South

The chances are small in any given year, but it can happen even in parts of the South.

It didn't reach the 1-inch snow depth criterion, but widespread cold and some snow reached into parts of the Tennessee Valley in 2022. A trace of snow was reported on the ground in 2022 in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Memphis, Tennessee.

In 2020, a white Christmas was observed in Knoxville, Tennessee (2 inches), and Roanoke, Virginia (1 inch). Nashville had a trace of snow on Christmas Day in 2020.

But there are three relatively recent events that left behind an unusual Christmas Day snow cover to parts of the South:

-In 2009, Oklahoma City had a snowstorm of record (13.5 inches), and one of only two white Christmases on record occurred in Dallas (2 inches).

-In 2004 in Texas, Corpus Christi had a record snowstorm (4.4 inches), and Brownsville (1.5 inches) had its first day of measurable snow since 1895. Brownsville is on the same latitude as Miami, Florida.

-In 1989, a pre-Christmas snowfall was followed by a strong arctic cold outbreak that brought both Charleston, South Carolina (4 inches), and Savannah, Georgia (2 inches), their only white Christmases. Jacksonville, Florida, missed a white Christmas by a day when an inch of snow fell Christmas Eve morning. It had melted by Christmas Day.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.