Celebrating Christmas and New Year with Snow

Snow in New Orleans, Louisiana. A rare event today - snow in New Orleans. Some areas of south Louisiana have an accumulation of up to four inches. Schools are closed and lots of inexperienced snow drivers are causing accidents.

Probability of at least one inch of snow on the ground Christmas Day. Note: This is not a forecast. (National Climatic Data Center map). Meteorologists can't forecast more than three or four days ahead of time whether a particular place is likely to have snow on the ground on Christmas Day.

U.S. weather records averaged over a 30-year period show that only five places with long-term weather records are practically guaranteed to have a white Christmas. They are Marquette and Sault Ste Marie in Michigan, Hibbing and International Falls in Minnesota, and Stampede Pass in Washington.

As the map shows, wide areas of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, much of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and western mountains including the Cascades of Washington and Oregon, California's Sierra, and the Rockies from Montana and Idaho south into southern Colorado have a better than 90% chance of snow on the ground at Christmas.

Most ski areas, of course, are likely to have snow on the ground on Christmas, even if they have to make it.

Source: USATODAY.com