Chances of white Christmas ‘not looking very good’

“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” might have to replace “White Christmas” this holiday season, at least in parts of Michigan.

With rain and relatively warm temperatures in the forecast for this week, the odds of having a white Christmas Saturday “are not looking very good,” according to the National Weather Service.

There’s a chance of snow changing over to rain Friday into Saturday. And that’s about as close as residents will get to a white Christmas.

Still, meteorologists say we’ll soon get as much snow as we want. Just not on Christmas or Christmas Eve.

“(Some areas to the south) might get a dusting on Tuesday and another one on Thursday, but I think the chances of us having snow for Christmas are not looking very good,” said Steve Freitag of the National Weather Service in White Lake Township.

To qualify as an official white Christmas, there must be one inch of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on Christmas Day

Some might think of Michigan as having freshfallen snow on Christmas morning. But that’s really not the case, at least the southeast portion. The weather service says over the past 115 years, there have been 55 — or about 47 % — officially white Christmases in the Detroit area.

Based on Detroit records, the “whitest” Christmas was in 1951 with 13 inches of snow recorded, records show.

Andy Taylor of Macomb Township says he likes the snow, but only around Christmas.

“You got to have snow for Christmas,” he said while browsing through shops at the Mall at Partridge Creek in Clinton Township. “After that, no one really wants to see it.”

But not to fret. There is plenty of snow in the state’s future, according to the weather service.

“You will see so much snow, January through March, you’ll be sick of it,” said Freitag, the meteorologist.