Dreaming of a white Christmas? You might be out of luck. An analysis of 40 years of snow measurements shows that less of the country now has snow for Christmas than in the 1980s.
In 20 to 30 years “with climate warming, the prospects of a white Christmas in many parts of the U.S.A. will be slim indeed,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looks at “climate normals” — 30-year periods for about 5,000 weather stations across the lower 48 states.
Denver’s airport station went from 40% chance of Christmas snow from 1981 to 2010 to 34%. Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, Fort Wayne, Topeka, Des Moines, Akron, Albany, Olympia, Rapid City, and Oklahoma City airports saw drops of three or four percentage points. Temperature alters snowfall in two different ways. In warmer borderline areas, warmer air turns snow into rain. But in cooler more northern areas where even higher temperatures are still below freezing, warmer temperatures mean more snow because warmer air holds more moisture, which comes down as snow, meteorologists said.
“It matters for many as an emotional weight of how the season ought to feel or how we think it ought to feel,” National Snow and Ice Data scientist Twila Moon said. “But the climate scientist in me is also very interested in having a white Christmas because it’s an indicator of how much and what type of precipitation we’ve gotten. And that is also really important because so much of our country is dealing with extreme drought right now.
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