A white Christmas in New York State seems increasingly likely. Because there are already several inches of snow on the ground, that’s not a certainty, but it is likely, said meteorologist Bob Hamilton of the National Weather Service in Buffalo.
A system is expected to move through western New York on Monday, bringing another 1 to 3 inches of snow to much of the state, including the Rochester region. Combined with the seasonally cooler temperatures, which will be below freezing at least through Monday, the snow is expected to “stick around until Christmas Day,” he said.
Such a prediction, he said, is not a complete certainty, but a roughly 75 to 80% chance. And highs over the next few days will be cooler than normal, with a forecast high Sunday in the teens and low to mid 30s Monday through Thursday. Later in the week, Hamilton said, warmer highs are forecast — in the low to mid 40s. The normal high in New York State the week of Christmas is around 30 degrees.
Snow forecast map: view daily snowfall projections
The map below shows the probability that an area could receive more than 4 inches of snow in the US. See the New York projections. Use the slider at the top left to switch by day.
What is a white Christmas?
It doesn’t have to snow on December 25 to meet the weather service’s definition of a white Christmas. There only needs to be at least an inch of snow on the ground. A trace of snow doesn’t count either. On average, about 38% of the Lower 48 will have an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day, according to 21 years of data collected by NOAA.
Since 2003, these percentages have varied widely from year to year, from as low as 17.6% last year to as high as 63% of the contiguous U.S. in 2009, according to Weather.com.
Three cities in New York are centrally located in the snow
For major cities with at least 100,000 residents, there are three in Western New York that take home the award for snowiest cities, according to data from the National Weather Service.
Thanks largely to lake-generated snow, Syracuse is the snowiest major city in the country, receiving about 12 feet of snow per winter season, according to the National Weather Service. It is also one of the rainiest and cloudiest cities in the country. Other cities in western New York, such as Rochester and Buffalo, average about 10 feet per year, again due to lake effect.
To date this year, 20.4 inches have fallen in Buffalo and 18.4 inches in Syracuse. Seasonal snowfall in Rochester has exceeded a foot, but exact figures were not available after Friday, forecasters said. However, Binghamton, which is about 70 miles south of Syracuse, has already recorded more than 14 inches of snow this winter, according to the Weather Service.
“Lake effect snow generated by the Great Lakes is among the heaviest snowfalls in the world,” Weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said in an online report.
One of the most notable lake effect snowfalls in New York occurred over a 10-day period between February 3 and 12, 2007, when 141 centimeters of snow (that’s 3.50 meters) was measured in the town of Redfield, Oswego County, about 80 kilometers northeast of Syracuse, near Lake Ontario.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: White Christmas in New York? What the latest prediction says
