What are the chances of a white Christmas in the Southern Tier of New York and the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania?
Well, there seems to be no chance the nestling children all snug in their beds on Christmas Eve will wake up Wednesday morning to a winter wonderland, according to both AccuWeather and the National Weather Service. Sorry, that’s it. Nothing, in fact, temperatures are expected to be above normal on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The average high temperature on December 25 is 31 degrees (from daily weather data collected since 1951). The forecast calls for a Christmas afternoon high temperature in the low 40s.
‘Tis nice to dream about a white Christmas with fires so delightful and no place to go, but it’s actually more the stuff of greeting cards and sentimental songs than the actual weather on Christmas day.
Since the National Weather Service started keeping weather data in 1951 at Greater Binghamton Airport:
- only 19% of the time on Christmas Day did we get at least an inch of snow (or about one in every five years);
- half of the time, though, we do get a trace of snow (or about once every two Christmases).
Two-tenths of an inch of snow was measured last Christmas … the Christmas before, 2017 … 2.4 inches of snow fell on Christmas day, putting it at No. 5 on the list of all-time heaviest snowfalls on the holiday … no snow in 2014, 2015 or 2016. In fact, Christmases 2014 and 2015 felt like spring with high temperatures in the 50s. The record all-time warmest temperature for Christmas Day of 58 degrees was set in 2015. That followed a record-setting high temperature for Christmas Eve of 63 degrees.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
from Your Hometown Station WEBO.
