A white Christmas just a dream this season

With Christmas only a few days away, meteorologists can now predict where folks will see snow on the big day. Based on the latest forecast, for most of the country, Christmas will be green or brown – but not white.

“The white Christmas coverage this year will be slightly below normal, significantly below what it is now,” AccuWeather founder and CEO Joel N. Myers said.

In fact, most of the country is “unlikely” to see a white Christmas, AccuWeather’s Paul Walker added. It’s possible much of the northern half of the country and areas of the Southwest may get some snowfall, but the few places they believe are likely to wake up to a white Christmas are generally limited to the high-elevation locations, according to AccuWeather.

This includes the higher elevations of the West, where snow-covered ground is normal this time of year, including the Rockies, Cascades and Sierra Nevada, Walker said. Walker said portions of the northern Plains, Upper Midwest and Northeast are likely to have snow on Christmas. In the central U.S., this includes eastern North Dakota, northern Minnesota and Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The big cities of the Northeast, for the most part, are out of luck: “Boston could have a white Christmas,” Myers said. “But southwest from there – from Providence, southern Connecticut, New York City, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore – the big eastern cities, for the most part, will not have a white Christmas,” Myers said.

In the Midwest, Chicago is “borderline,” he said. And some areas where snow is on the ground now won’t end up with a white Christmas thanks to mild air that’s forecast to flow across the country by the end of the weekend and early next week, according to Walker. Snow from a storm earlier this week is likely to melt from the central Plains to the Ohio Valley before the holiday.

The National Weather Service defines a white Christmas as having 1 inch of snow the morning of Dec. 25.