Christmas snow possible in northern New England

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – If you want a White Christmas, the place to be during the holiday will be in northern New England and upper New York State.Meteorologists at Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center say that although a white Christmas is unlikely for many places in the Northeast, snow-prone upstate New York and northern New England still have favorable odds that snow will come in time for the yuletide, despite a warm spell that produced one of the least snowy Novembers on record. The center lists the top six places with the best chance of a white Christmas with at least 1 inch of snow as Caribou, Maine; Concord, N.H.; Syracuse; Portland, Maine; Binghamton, N.Y.; and Burlington, Vt.

Keith Eggleston, a senior climatologist at the center, said that for this holiday season, the center revised its annual white Christmas probability statistics. For the past decade, the center has been using meteorological data from 1961 through 1990. Now, the statistical chances of seeing an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day will be based on the years 1971 through 2000, he said.

Eggleston said the center recalculates its probabilities for a white Christmas based on the previous 30 years of information.

“If we added the 1960s back, the probabilities would likely increase, but we are interested in calculating climate normals – that is standard throughout the world,” he said.

“Thirty years is enough to get a pretty good idea about the climate. It’s pretty stable. But, if you want to see a trend, you work with more recent years.”

Even with the revised calculations, the place with highest probability of seeing a white Christmas remained Caribou, Maine, although the chances dropped from 97 percent to 93 percent under the new calculations, Eggleston said.

After Caribou, Concord, N.H., was the second-most-likely place in the Northeast to have a white Christmas, although its chances also declined under the new calculations from 87 percent to 73 percent, just slightly ahead of Syracuse’s 70 percent Portland, Maine, has a 66 percent chance of a white Christmas.