Snow Prodictions...

This is from WeatherBug:

With the holiday season fast approaching, many people are starting to wonder if they will have a "White Christmas" this year.

Although it is still too early to tell exactly where there will be snow on the ground on Dec. 25, past history does give a clue. Using more than 30 years of Christmas weather observations, government climatologists have produced probabilities of a White Christmas.

A "White Christmas" is defined as at least 1 inch of snow being on the ground the morning of Dec. 25. This does not necessarily mean that the snow fell on Dec. 24 or 25.

As expected, the Great Lakes region and the mountains of the West have the highest probability of seeing a White Christmas. Areas that have a 60% or better chance of snow on the ground on Dec. 25 include the northern Rockies, northern Great Plains, the lake-effect snow belts surrounding all of the Great Lakes and most of inland New England.

There are only five locations in the U.S. that have a 100% probability of a White Christmas. They are Stampede Pass, Wash.; Marquette and Sault Ste Marie, Mich.; and Hibbing and International Falls, Minn.

Stampede Pass, Wash., in the Cascade Mountains east of Tacoma, has a 96% chance that there will be more than 10 inches of snow on the ground on Dec. 25.

If you want to avoid snow for the holiday, the southern third of the nation is where you want to head. The chance of a White Christmas is less than 20% in this part of the country. For Florida, the Gulf Coast, lower Mississippi Valley, southern Plains, lower Desert Southwest and coastal sections of southern and central California, the chance of snow being on the ground Dec. 25 is nearly zero.

Story Image is courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).