Norfolk has been waiting 54 years since its last official white Christmas
The fleeting chance of snow in Hampton Roads on Christmas Day are all but gone, but honestly, the chances we would get a true white Christmas always were slim.
You see, “white Christmas” has a specific definition for meteorologists: There must be at least an inch of snow on the ground by 7 a.m.
It’s a standard set by the World Meteorological Organization and has to do with official record keeping. Climate statistics are recorded at the same time all around the world.
In Norfolk, there is less than a 10% chance of a white Christmas on any given year, according to the National Weather Service.
The other measurement the organization uses to record snowfall on Christmas Day is based on the 24-hour period from midnight to midnight. And there’s little chance of that in Norfolk this time of year, as well.
The last time there was measurable snow on Christmas Day was 2010. Norfolk got eight-tenths of an inch — so tantalizing close to an official white Christmas.
Of course, the next day the city got a whopping 14.2 inches. It was Norfolk’s third-largest snowfall on record. Other years in which Norfolk had measurable snow on Christmas Day: 1914, 1917, 1947 and 1948.
The last time Norfolk had an official white Christmas was 1966, when the city got 4 inches of snow by 7 a.m.
In Norfolk, Christmas Day temperatures are usually between 34-50 degrees. The coldest Christmas was in 1983, when the high temperature was 16 degrees. It was the fifth-coldest day recorded in Norfolk since the 1870s, according to the weather service.
The warmest Christmas was just a few years ago, in 2015, when the highs were in the mid-to-upper 70s.
The best chances of seeing a white Christmas over the years have been in Idaho, Minnesota, Maine, upstate New York, the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and the Rockies and Sierra Nevada mountains, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Aspen, Colorado, is one of about a dozen locations that has a 100% historical probability of seeing a white Christmas, according to NOAA.
It’s based on averages of several climatological measurements from 1981 to 2010. Though last week it looked like there was a chance of seeing snow on Christmas Day, it’s probably not going to happen. The wait for a true white Christmas goes on.