White Christmas: What History Says About Chances In Colorado

It’s a fairly safe bet that some parts of the country will get the white Christmas we all dream about — or dread, depending on holiday travel schedules. (Aspen, Colorado, is just one of about a dozen locations boasting a 100 percent historical probability of seeing a white Christmas.)

An interactive map from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows which states, historically, have the best probability of a white Christmas. Here in Colorado, history is iffy, and it depends where you live.

Some southern states and cities almost never get a white Christmas, though New Orleans got 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 just before Christmas.

History shows there’s a less than 10 percent chance those states will see measurable snow on Christmas this year.

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 look at the interactive map to get a better idea of the historical probability of measurable snow in cities in Colorado.

Of course, nothing beats the actual weather forecast to predict whether it will be snowy at Christmastime. The map shows only the climatological probability of a white Christmas.

As for Denver, and metro-Denver, the forecast is ambivalent. Historically, there's a 17.5 percent chance of precipitation on Dec. 24 and 25, and the temps could be as low as 16 degrees or as high as 43 degrees, with an average of 29 degrees. But that's Colorado weather for ya.

“The conditions this year may vary widely from these probabilities because the weather patterns present 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 ground is more likely.”

Based on that, if you’re set on snow at Christmas, your best 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.

By Dec. 18, we should have a good idea of the Christmas forecast in metro Denver from the National Weather Service.

NOAA based its map on the 1981–2010 Climate Normals, which are the latest three-decade averages of several 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’re interested in the climate normals in Colorado, use the interactive map or search tool from the National Centers for Environmental Education, formerly known as the National Climatic Data Center.

By the way, the idea of a white Christmas in the United States is often associated with American composer Irving Berlin’s classic, “White Christmas,” recorded by Bing Crosby and others. As the “White Christmas” backstory goes, the great American composer wrote “White Christmas” while saying at an inn in southern California in 1940, and reimagined the glistening tree tops and other wintery sights from his childhood in New York.

Other artists who have notably covered the timeless Christmas song include Otis Redding, The Supremes, Lady Gaga, The Drifters and Elvis Presley.

Here’s the classic Bing Crosby version:

By Beth Dalbey, Patch Staff

Photo via Shutterstock

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