Fishing

White Christmas

The probability of whether or not North Carolina will experience a white Christmas is a question on the minds of many as the holiday season approaches. Such information can be found on the National Climatic Data Center's website here. The image below depicts a map of probabilities generated by NCDC for the contiguous U.S.

Below you will find a drop-down box containing a list of NWS Cooperative stations across North Carolina that measure snowfall. By selecting a station from the list, you will find a table containing the years in which the station observed a white Christmas (defined as December 24-26) throughout its period of record, as well as the total amount of snow that fell over those three days. The last row in the table includes a white Christmas frequency, defined as the number of years in which snow was observed over the Christmas holiday, divided by the total number of years in which snow was possible for the given station.

You'll also find a table of winter storm events (includes ice as well as snow events) that took place over the Christmas holiday and affected the county in which the station is located. By clicking on the link associated with the given event, or on the corresponding map, you will be taken to this event's information page in the Winter Storm Events Database. NOTE: records in the Winter Storm Database began in 1959. In addition, while the events listed in the table may include multiple winter weather precipitation types, all listed precipitation types may not necessarily have been observed in the given county.

Select a station:

This station's period of record runs from 1892-01-15 through 2016-12-31.


Year Total Snowfall Observed December 24-26
(inches)
1939 1
1966 0.5
2004 3.5
2010 4
Frequency of a White Christmas 4 out of 124 (0.032)


Wintry Christmas Events
(from the Winter Storm Database)
Event DateMap of Event Coverage
Dec 23 - 24, 1963
Glaze
Dec 25 - 26, 1969
Glaze, Snow, Sleet
Dec 25 - 26, 1975
Ice, Snow Storm
Dec 22 - 24, 1989
Blizzard
Dec 23 - 25, 1998
Ice Storm
Dec 26, 2004
Snow, Sleet
Dec 25 - 26, 2010
Heavy Snow, Snow