Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? The Chicago forecast reduces the already slim odds

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas this year? Keep dreaming, Chicago.

Meteorologists expect the day to be the opposite of a winter wonderland: dreary, cloudy and damp. The chance of more than an inch of snowfall is historically low at about 35% for this date – and that chance could be higher given a magical day this year.

The city has only experienced one white Christmas in the last six years. It was 2022, and even then there was just 1 inch of snow. Previously, in 2016 and 2017, Chicago residents woke up on the morning of December 25th to at least two inches of snow falling.

“Typically, the Chicago area has a white Christmas about every three to four years,” said Brett Borchardt, senior meteorologist at the National Weather Service Chicago office. “However, it doesn’t look like we will have a white Christmas this year. I know there are still some places where there is snow, particularly in the northern suburbs – that will all go away.”

Borchardt said he expects high temperatures around 40 degrees on Wednesday with showers, drizzle and even some fog.

According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the period 1991-2020, the chances of a white Christmas in the United States have historically been highest in Alaska, the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes region and parts of the Northeast.

In Illinois, the chance of more than 1 inch of snow falling on Christmas Day ranged from 20 to 50 percent over those three decades, with the chance increasing farther north. This year, AccuWeather more optimistically predicted a “medium chance” of a winter wonderland vacation in the northern part of the state.

Locations with the highest historical probability in the Midwest include Marquette, Michigan, at 96%; Duluth, Minn., at 92%; Wausau, Wisconsin, at 85%; Minot, North Dakota, at 82%; and Minneapolis–St. Paul with 74%.

However, actual conditions may vary from year to year due to local weather conditions. For example, Chicago’s largest snowfall of 1950 occurred on December 25, when 5.1 inches covered the ground at Midway Airport after forecasters predicted light snow that day.

Even if it does snow, milder temperatures and warmer soils may not allow for significant snow accumulation.

And climate change only complicates the timing, location and amount of snowfall in the United States.

Snowpack on any given day is determined primarily by diurnal weather systems rather than long-term warming, although monthly average temperatures rise in the winter months, NOAA says.

“Winters are warming faster than any other season, but in Chicago we have not seen a significant downward trend in snowfall for many reasons,” said Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford. “Just because it’s warmer doesn’t mean it’s snowing less. Just because it’s colder doesn’t mean it’s snowing more.”

In fact, warmer temperatures could increase snowfall, he said, because warm air has a higher water-holding capacity, allowing clouds to retain more moisture. This, in turn, increases precipitation and, if temperatures are cold enough on a given day, snowfall.

Chicago’s winters are getting shorter and there is less snowfall in October and November, but warmer air in January and February likely contributes to more snowfall in those months.

“Isolated snow events in the cold core of the season may become snowier for a while, even as temperatures warm,” wrote Michael Palecki, a physicist and climate normals project leader at the National Centers for Environmental Information. “However, snow chances will likely decrease at the beginning and end of the season and the length of the snow season will become shorter.”

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In Chicago, the 1991-2020 snow season typically saw 1 to 2 inches more snowfall than in 1981-2010, according to Palecki, but the slight increase in snow amounts did not result in an increased chance of a white Christmas in Chicago City.

“When you add to that the complexity of just looking at snowfall on a given day like Christmas, it becomes even crazier, more variable and more complicated,” Ford said. “Because we’re having the snowiest winter on record “We could have, and it just so happened that it didn’t snow on Christmas.”

While NOAA warns against wide-ranging comparisons between climate normals, subtle differences between 1981-2010 and 1991-2020 show that more areas of the country have seen their chances of a white Christmas decrease rather than increase over the past decade.

Overall, 64% of more than 2,000 locations across the country are seeing less snow today than they did in the early 1970s, and another 36% are seeing an increase in snowfall, according to an assessment of snowfall trends by the science education nonprofit Climate Central.

Such locations may include places near large bodies of water such as the Great Lakes, which may experience heavy local snowfall. Lake effect snow occurs when cold air from the north flows over relatively warmer open water. As the planet has warmed, so have the Great Lakes – Lake Michigan just had its warmest November in 30 years. These higher water temperatures and reduced ice cover increase the lake’s evaporation and increase its snow effect.

Even though Chicago is on the lake and it does snow, there is not as much lake effect snow as places downwind of a Great Lake such as Buffalo, New York, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Kalamazoo, Sault Ste. Marie and Marquette in Michigan, all of which are seeing an upward trend in snowfall.

If anything, a snow-free December can make hectic air travel in one of the country’s busiest hubs a less stressful experience, with fewer weather-related delays and cancellations. In 2022, a snowstorm in the days leading up to the city’s last white Christmas caused hundreds of flights to be canceled from O’Hare and Midway airports.

And Chicagoans can still hope for another white Christmas.

“Even if we had a significant downward trend in snowfall in Chicago – which, by the way, is expected over the next 50 or 60 years because it continues to get warmer in the winter and we’ll probably see less snowfall overall, especially before January,” said Ford. “Even if we see this trend, it doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be snow at Christmas.”

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