Will You Have a White Christmas This Year? (Published 2022) (2024)

If you are dreaming of a white Christmas, your dreams may just come true this year.

A significant winter storm is sweeping through the country’s eastern half and is likely to deliver snow to many who don’t normally see snow on Christmas. With temperatures plummeting below freezing, snow that falls from this storm will have a better chance of remaining through Christmas.

The National Weather Service officially considers a place to have a white Christmas if there is one inch of snow already on the ground or if new snowfall of at least one inch falls on Christmas Day.

Enter your U.S. location to get a glimpse of what your future holds. This tracker shows whether you or your loved ones might have snow on the ground Christmas Day.

This forecast is created from the Snow Data Assimilation System, or SNODAS, which is a computer forecast model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center providing the best estimates of future snow cover.

As with most weather models, the SNODAS forecast will be more accurate the closer we get to Christmas Day. If your area is on the edge of the storm system, you could see the predictions fluctuate quite a bit over the next few days depending on exactly where the storm forms.

While a white Christmas might help the treetops glisten, the storm is likely to bring hazardous travel conditions as well. Here is where meteorologists expect winter weather to have an impact on daily life.

Sarah Kapnick, the chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has specialized in studying snow throughout her career. She said that her family alternates between spending the holidays in a cold and a warm place.

People who grew up in areas such as the Northeast, West and Midwest may have formed emotional bonds with snow, associating it with vacation time and family, Dr. Kapnick said.

“Due to climate change, people who want a white Christmas will be chasing snow in the United States toward those places that either have it in the forecast or that have typically had the most likely probabilities,” she said.

Last year, NOAA updated the average probabilities of a white Christmas across the United States. Although the report cautioned against comparing the new estimates with those created a decade before, it said “more areas experienced decreases in their chances of a white Christmas than experienced increases.”

Classic Christmas movies like “Miracle on 34th Street” depict snow falling during the Christmas season in New York City. But it has been more than a decade since New York City has seen snow on the ground on Christmas, and even in 2009, the snow depth was from a storm days before, leaving some to jokingly call it a “gray Christmas” because of the city grime that mixed with the snow.

It is not the first time the city has gone this long without an inch of snow on Christmas Day. The song “White Christmas” was written during one of those long, snowless-Christmas spells.

Irving Berlin appears to start writing the song “White Christmas” in 1938, according to James Kaplan, author of “Irving Berlin: New York Genius.”

This was “when he was spending a lot of time in Hollywood,” Mr. Kaplan said.

At that time, Mr. Berlin was not particularly happy with being in Hollywood, so he began writing this song, Mr. Kaplan said. It’s entirely possible that Mr. Berlin felt some nostalgia about the old days in the Lower East Side where he grew up.

Data from the National Weather Service shows that at the turn of the 19th century, there were some frequent white Christmases in the city. By the time he wrote the song at the end of the 1930s, New York City had not seen a white Christmas since 1930, according to weather service data and the official definition of a white Christmas.

Initially, there was a lost verse he wrote for the beginning of the song, Mr. Kaplan said, and to his knowledge, no one ever recorded it. (In fact others have done just that.)

“It went something like this,” he said in the rhythm of the original song. “The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway. There’s never been such a day in Beverly Hills, L.A., but it’s December the 24th, and I am longing to be up north.”

But that is not how Bing Crosby sang it, instead cutting that first verse and starting with the familiar chorus, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.”

“It was really Bing Crosby’s recording of the song and the beginning of World War II. That was a huge accelerator for the fame and the profitability of that song,” Mr. Kaplan said. “Because Bing Crosby’s recording of the song was heard by soldiers and sailors overseas at the beginning of the war.”

Americans entered the war after Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Bing Crosby’s recording was released the next year.

According to weather service data for Central Park, there wasn’t snow on Christmas in New York after Mr. Berlin wrote the song until 1945, a few months after the end of the war.

Similar to when this song was written, New Yorkers continue a white Christmas drought. The last time New York City measured a snow depth or new snowfall of at least one inch on Christmas Day was in 2009.

Historically, New York City has had a white Christmas 25 of the last 152 years, or about one in every six years, according to the National Weather Service.

This year, New York City looks likely to narrowly miss a classic holiday wonderland.

This article has been updated to note that others have recorded a version of “White Christmas” that included a verse omitted in the Bing Crosby version.