being connected to climate change, said the downward slide of white Christmases is consistent with global warming. Still, Zeng, who has published studies on decreasing snowpack in the western U.S. The numbers are small enough that it’s difficult to tell whether this is a meaningful trend and, if so, whether climate change or natural weather variability is the cause, said University of Arizona atmospheric scientist Xubin Zeng, who ran the data. Average snow depth fell from 3.5 inches to 2.4 inches. The Christmas snow cover average there went from nearly 55% in the 1980s to slightly above 41% now, the Arizona data shows. The change was particularly pronounced in a swath from about the Mason-Dixon line to just north of Detroit, Chicago, and Nebraska. From 2011 to 2020, Christmas snow cover was down to 38%, with an average depth of 2.7 inches. And from 2011 to 2020, it was up to an average slightly above 35 degrees, considerably above the freezing mark.īut what did that warming trend, natural weather variability and a western megadrought mean to white Christmases?įrom 1981 to 1990, on average, almost 47% of the country had snow on the ground Christmas Day, with an average depth of 3.5 inches (8.8 centimeters), according to an analysis of ground observation data by the University of Arizona for The Associated Press. was a tad below freezing from 1981 to 1990, federal weather records show. The average December temperature in the continental U.S. The last one was in 2010 in Dubuque, which weather records show used to have white Christmases nearly two out of three years. “We don’t have white Christmas,’’ said boutique owner Bill Kaesbauer. The retired Dubuque, Iowa, educator known for his front yard nativity scenes said snow on Christmas is supposed to be part of the holiday: “The one that makes my heart warm is after going to midnight Mass and coming outside and it’s snowing.”īut the weather in Dubuque hasn’t cooperated in recent years.

Scientists say the decline in the number of white Christmases is relatively small and caution about drawing conclusions.īut the trend matters mightily to some people like George Holland. And snow that falls doesn’t measure up to past depths. That’s especially true in a belt across the nation’s midsection - from Baltimore to Denver and a few hundred miles farther north. snow measurements shows that less of the country now has snow for Christmas than in the 1980s. An analysis of 40 years of December 25 U.S. A white Christmas seems to be slowly morphing from a reliable reality to a dream of snowy holidays past for large swaths of the United States in recent decades.

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