AccuWeather Sees White Christmas Chance For Seattle

SEATTLE — The chances of a white Christmas are typically low around Puget Sound compared to much of the country, but this winter may hold some surprises yet, according to AccuWeather’s long-range holiday forecast.

The influential La Niña weather pattern is in play for a third consecutive winter, and that typically drives an active storm track across the northern tier of U.S. states while leaving southern sections of the country drier than normal. But this Christmas, AccuWeather said, the map looks a little different.

Generally, the Northwest and Rockies should see snow during the middle of the month. It’ll stick around in higher elevations, where AccuWeather puts the probability of a white Christmas around 90 percent. However, in Salt Lake City and Denver, chances for a white Christmas are only near to slightly above normal.

A cold front coming down from Canada to the Northwest may send temperatures plummeting in lower-elevation areas, which AccuWeather predicts will produce more snow in places like Seattle and Portland, Oregon. Seattle typically doesn’t see its first snowfall until Dec. 31, but this year is off to an unusually early start.

Long-term outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center favor colder air sticking around in Western Washington into the new year, but precipitation may run below average leading up to Christmas. However, climatologists favor cool temperatures coinciding with wetter conditions between Christmas Eve and the first week of January.

Last year, Seattle picked up several inches of snow as temperatures plunged in the days after Christmas.

Elsewhere, folks living in the Buffalo, New York, area, inundated with more than 80 inches of lake-effect snow last month, are likely to see a white Christmas, because, even with mild temperatures for the last half of the month, there’s not enough time between now and then for the mountain of snow to melt, according to the private weather company.

Meteorological winter started on the first of the month, but the season is off to a slow start in New England, the only area east of the Rocky Mountains expected to see higher than normal snowfall this winter. But that likely won’t happen before the calendar flips to 2023, when snowfall totals are likely to be boosted by a few nor’easters, according to AccuWeather's winter forecast.

The holiday shouldn’t be a total bust in northern New England and upstate, central and western New York. Chances for a white Christmas are near normal in cities like Burlington, Vermont; Albany and Syracuse, New York; and Cleveland.

The spine of the Appalachian Mountains looks to have an above-normal chance of having snow on the ground in time for Christmas, but AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Paul Pastelok said brief periods of warmer weather before the holiday could reduce the amount of snow across the central Appalachians.

Across the central Plains and Tennessee Valley, chances for a white Christmas usually aren’t very good — about 25 percent, according to historical data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They could see snow in the first half of the month, and cold temperatures sticking around could keep it on the ground, increasing the chances of a white Christmas in those areas.

Chicago has a near-normal chance for a white Christmas, according to the AccuWeather forecast. The city had its first measurable snowfall on Oct. 17, nearly a month earlier than average and more than two months earlier than in 2021, when the first snowfall on Dec. 28 was the latest ever for measurable accumulation.

As Christmas week approaches, the weather could go through another transition that will bring storms to the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest around Christmas Day.

White Christmases occur with about a 75 percent probability on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, northern Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota, according to historical data from the National Weather Service.

Pastelok and his team predict that snow chances will be higher than normal in those areas. Some areas of northern Nebraska could get snow from the same system, but Iowa and southern Nebraska, for the most part, will get cold weather, but lower-than-normal chances for snow.

The northern Plains can expect cold, snowy weather for the holidays. Billings, Montana, for example, is expected to have a higher-than-average chance of a white Christmas.

AccuWeather is the latest to issue its long-range Christmas forecast. Both The Old Farmer’s Almanac and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center previously made predictions for a white Christmas.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac expected large swaths of the country to have at least an inch of snow on Christmas Day. To determine the probability of a White Christmas in different parts of the country, the National Climatic Data Center looked at historical data from 1981-2010.