White Christmas

Alright, so the topic of this blog focuses on whether or not you are rooting for a white Christmas. On one hand, it would be neat to have snow on the ground for the holiday, but for anyone traveling, it is a HUGE headache trying to fight the weather and I know my dad is at home rooting against the snow (makes it harder taking care of cattle). Slick roads, bad visibility, venturing out when it is cold, etc. just doesn't sound like a Santa bag full of fun. White Christmas's happen about once every 5-7 years, and sometimes it is every 10. We had one just two years ago when there was 4 inches of snow on the ground in Wichita, and it was driven by some strong winds. It was a disaster for last minute shoppers and some of the people that work at Channel 12 had to be picked up in 4 wheel drive vehicles. The map above shows the average possibilities of a white Christmas. It's about 10-15% for most of the state.

There is a good chance of a white Christmas this year if the storm developing next week doesn't do something crazy, like move through south Texas or Louisiana and it could happen. The computer models that we analyze agree there will be a storm next week and it will have an ample supply of Gulf moisture. So that's not the question. We'll have to figure out the track of the storm, and then how much cold air will be involved. If we knew the answers to those two questions, I could tell you all about the travel weather for next week, and then we could know for sure about a white Christmas. But that's part of the excitement in meteorology; it's always changing and we'll have 15-20 computer model outputs before the storm. So stay tuned as it will be crazy over the next 8-12 days.