Evan Sémon
Audio By Carbonatix
As Bing Crosby crooned in 1954, we here along the Front Range also dream of a “White Christmas.”
Dream on. The odds, and our climate, are never in our favor.
The fine folks at the National Weather Service in Boulder keep tabs on Christmas weather. In their records going back to 1882, we’ve had at least one inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day only 37 percent of the time.
Oh, you want snow to fall ON Christmas Day? Good luck; that drops your chances to 14 percent.
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Warning: nerdy weather discussion to follow.
You see, we live in a high-altitude, semi-arid climate and winter is the driest season of this semi-arid climate. Having little or no snow in December actually happens quite a bit.
The least snowy of them all? Well, that’s a three-way tie, all with a “trace” of snow. A “trace” is less than one-tenth of an inch, so not much at all for an entire month.
But these months aren’t uncommon; here are Denver’s Top 20 Least Snowy Decembers:
| Top 20 Least Snowy Decembers (1882-Present) | ||
| Rank | Total snowfall | Year |
| 1 | T | 2002 |
| – | T | 1906 |
| – | T | 1905 |
| 4 | 0.1 | 1928 |
| 5 | 0.4 | 1890 |
| 6 | 0.5 | 2018 |
| – | 0.5 | 1935 |
| 8 | 0.6 | 1995 |
| 9 | 0.7 | 1977 |
| – | 0.7 | 1895 |
| 11 | 0.8 | 1957 |
| – | 0.8 | 1931 |
| – | 0.8 | 1888 |
| 14 | 0.9 | 1970 |
| 15 | 1.2 | 1980 |
| – | 1.2 | 1962 |
| – | 1.2 | 1945 |
| 18 | 1.4 | 2024 |
| – | 1.4 | 2023 |
| 20 | 1.8 | 1996 |
| – | 1.8 | 1887 |
Of those top three years, 1905 was a strong El Niño, 1906 a weak La Niña, 2002 a weak El Niño. Yeah, I don’t really see a pattern, either. Though it seems like a million years ago, we did have (officially) 4.5” of snow this month.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the colder-than-average Tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (aka “La Niña) might affect our total winter snow outlook.
This year’s “Niña” is a weak one, with an ONI Value (“Oceanic Niño Index”) of 0.6.
An ONI of 1.0 to 1.5 is “Moderate”; anything over 1.5 is “Strong.” Denver’s snowiest winter season was in 1908-09 (118.7”), during a moderate-to-strong La Niña.
In more recent history, the 2016-’17 snow season had only 21.8 inches of snow, and that was during a “Neutral” condition in the Tropical Pacific, with no El Niño or La Niña. December 2016 had 9.7” of snow, and we did have a “White Christmas” all up and down the Front Range. Then the bottom fell out, and our usual snowiest month of March eked out just a trace of snow. So there you go.
Bottom line is this: Our high-altitude, semi-arid climate has a wide, wide range of variation when it comes to things like seasonal snowfall. So just because we don’t remember something never happening before doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before!
Oh, and the snow famine here in Colorado extends all the way to the mountains of the West Coast, despite the fact that the Sierra Nevada is getting a really big storm right now over the Christmas holiday.
So La Niña is not playing any favorites this snow season.
Happy holidays!
