Thinking About A White Christmas!

 A White Christmas is defined by the National Climatic Data Center for this map as a Christmas Day having 1" of snow or greater on the ground.

From the map above you see that the FOX19 viewing area is sandwiched between a 25% and a 10% chance of a white Christmas. The farther north you are in the Tristate - the better your chances are of having a White Christmas.

Official records have been kept @ CVG since 1947, before that at Abbe Observatory in Clifton then before that in Downtown Cincinnati starting November 1, 1870.

There are a variety of ways Christmas can be considered "White". The list below gives the chances of  based on official data and some additional Smithsonian Institution data going back to 1858.

WHITE CHRISTMAS STATS

SNOW FALLING  1858 – 2010 (152 YEARS) on Christmas Day

ANY SNOW FALLING ON XMAS DAY

15 TRACE DAYS + 19 MEASURABLE  DAYS  = 34 DAYS

34/152 =  22.4% CHANCE

MEASURABLE SNOW FALLING (>= 0.1” ON Christmas Day)

19/152 YEARS =  12.5% CHANCE

1” OR GREATER FALLING ON CHRISTMAS DAY

10/152 YEARS  =  6.6% CHANCE

2” OR GREATER FALLING ON CHRISTMAS DAY

7/152 YEARS  = 4.6% CHANCE

3” OR GREATER FALLING ON CHRISTMAS DAY

3/152 YEARS =  2% CHANCE

MOST SNOW FALLING ON CHRISTMAS DAY  7.0"  IN 1890

SNOW ON THE GROUND 1948 – 2010 (62 YEARS) On Christmas Day

ANY AMOUNT ON THE GROUND  (Trace + Measurable) 23/62 YEARS =                                                       37.1% CHANCE

TRACE ONLY (<1”)   12/62 YEARS          19.4% CHANCE

>= 1”  11/62 YEARS                                  17.7% CHANCE

>= 2”  7/62 YEARS                                    11.3% CHANCE

> =3” 6/62 YEARS                                        9.7% CHANCE

>= 4” 4/62 YEARS                                        6.5% CHANCE


MOST SNOW ON THE GROUND ON CHRISTMAS DAY  = 9" IN 2004