Where Will Christmas Be White in US?
About one-third of the United States had snow cover early Saturday and forecasters say some more places may also get to see a white Christmas. But overall, less number of Americans will get to see snow on Sunday than usual.
Parts of the Northeast and Southwest are almost certain to have more than 1 inch of snowfall on Sunday, but chances are not too bright elsewhere in the U.S., except southern New Mexico and southwest Texas.
A Christmas is called white when there is a snow depth of at least an inch on Christmas morning. And this year, there’s likely to be more snow than 1 inch in northern New England and the Great Lakes region, western Kansas, the Oklahoma and northern Texas panhandles, northern and southern Rocky Mountains region, and the Cascades and Sierra Nevada ranges.
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However, areas that often have a White Christmas, such as Syracuse, N.Y., Burlington, Vt., Green Bay, Wis., Minneapolis, Minn., and Bismarck, N.D., may not have enough snow this year.
This means not many Americans will have weather spicing up Dec. 25 for them.
From New England to the Dakotas and even parts of the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, snowfall has been well below normal through the fall and early winter with cold air bottled up over Canada, according to The Associated Press.
According to Victor Murphy of the National Weather Service, the reason is higher-than-normal temperatures this month from Montana to Virginia and drier-than-normal conditions in northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
In December, Chicago normally gets 8.5 inches of snow, but this year it has only received 1.7 inches of snow, the lowest since 2003. And New York City has seen no snowfall this month. Reno, Nev., has had no snowfall since November. “That’s the first time that’s happened since 1995,” Reuters quoted Murphy as saying.
