Waking up to a white Christmas is surely on many people’s wish lists, but the truth is that the presence of snow depends on different meteorological factors. However, There are places where experiencing a white Christmas is possible and is lived like a dream.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there are no places where white Christmases are completely guaranteed, but there are different places that most likely have a snowy Christmas each year.
How do you know where it will snow?
To find these places, meteorologists analyzed the , thinking the more times it has snowed in a city or town on Christmas, the more likely it is to happen again. Although there are places in America that do not experience snow, there are just as many places where experiencing a white Christmas is much more likely and feasible.
In the study they carried out, they created their own weather map of Christmas snowfall from 1991 to 2020. This map has changed due to changing meteorological trends, and therefore has been reducing slightly towards the north.
10 places to experience a white Christmas
- Fairbanks, Alaska: With an average temperature of 21.5 degrees Celsius below zero, so the snow that falls to the ground will stay there, forming a thin layer of up to 28 centimeters. There has only been one Christmas without snow in Fairbanks since 1934.
- Mammoth Lakes, California: Located at almost 2,000 meters in the Sierra Nevada, Mammoth Lakes seems like a marshmallow world in winter. In this area, snow can arrive as early as October, so when it is Christmas the snow temperature is very advanced.
- Telluride, Colorado: Despite being in the southern United States, Telluride has a surprisingly high chance of spending Christmas with snow, a 94% chance to be exact. This is because it is located in the San Juan Mountains, south of the Rockies.
- Duluth, Minnesota: It is called the “Christmas City of the North” because in addition to having a 92% chance of there being more than two centimeters of snow, there is a 60% chance that it will usually be covered with up to 12 centimeters of snow.
- Marquette, Michigan: One of the snowiest places in the United States, due to its geographic location, is a region known as the Upper Peninsula Snow Belt. This lake-snow effect city has recorded snow on the ground every Christmas except three years, 1994, 2006 and 2015, this means that there is a 96% chance of experiencing a white Christmas in this area.
- Lake Placid, New York: Thanks to the Great Lakes and the Adirondack Mountains, upstate New York has some of the best odds in history for a white Christmas. Here we have seen at least three centimeters of snow on the ground for almost nine out of ten years.
- Caribou, Maine: One of the northernmost cities in the United States. Since the beginning of meteorological records, 92% of Christmases have been white here and they experienced their largest accumulation of snow in 1989, when 60 centimeters of snow fell on the morning of December 25.
- Winnipeg, MB, : There has only been one Christmas without snow since 1955.
- Goose Bay, NL, Canada: Almost 77 centimeters of snow falls every December. Environment Canada reported that 98% of Christmases have been white, and better yet, you have a 55% chance of having a perfect Christmas, that is, with snow on the ground and snowflakes in the air.
- Prince George, BC, Canada: 91% of your Christmases have been covered in snow since 1955. In recent years, the average snow depth on Christmas morning is 14 centimeters.