Vermont Christmases Seem To Be Getting Less White

Snow falls from pine trees in West Rutland, Vermont on Christmas
morning, 2017. It was the only Christmas this decade when
Vermont received a decent amount of fresh snow. 

Vermont is the land of white Christmases, so goes common "knowledge."

The 1954 movie "White Christmas" cemented the idea that Vermont is a beautiful Christmas snowscape, reliable for the twinkling lights glinting beneath the snow and frost in our Currier and Ives-style quaint villages.

But at least in the state's valleys and warmer spots, Vermont is somewhat less what than it might have been decades ago.

The data from Burlington this past decade does show that the chances of white Christmases has been iffy in recent years.  Granted, Burlington is one of the warmer and drier parts of the state, which means there's more likely to be snow on the ground away from the Champlain Valley.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, Burlington has a 77 percent chance of a white Christmas and 13 percent chance of having at least ten inches on the ground.

The decade now ending fell short of that average.

Since 2010, including forecasts for this year, snow was/is on the ground seven out of 10 Christmases, which gives a 70 percent chance of having snow on the ground for the holiday. That's seven percentage points lower than average. Close but no cigar.

This stat is based on a forecast that it will not snow in Vermont by tomorrow morning. The ground in Burlington is pretty much bare, though snow remains in some parts of the state.

Even that 70 percent chance of snow stat is deceiving. Only five of those Christmases had 2 inches or more of snow on the ground. And one of those two-inch years - 2014 -  was during a thaw, so the ground was half bare on Christmas morning and had even had less snow by afternoon.

Only three Christmases had at least six inches of snow on the ground, which means those were unequivocally white.  The deepest snow cover was in 2017, with seven inches, so we fell short of having at minimum one Christmas per decade with at least ten inches of powder on the ground.

We also fell short of the NCDC stat that says five out of ten Christmases should have at least six inches of snow on the ground. This decade, there were only three such years.

By the way, it almost never snowed on Christmas Day in Burlington during this decade. The only year with measureable new snow was 2017, when 3.5 inches fell.  Trace amounts fell on four other Christmases.

If you average out the temperatures for the Christmases over the decade just ending, it was a little on the warm side. For 2019, I'm using the forecast high and low.  If you average out the decade, the mean Christmas temperature was 26.5 which is four degrees above normal.

There were some cold Christmases, but they were outweighed by warm ones. Two of those Christmases - 2014 and 2015 - had highs in the 50s.  In 2015, the high temperature in Burlington on Christmas Eve was  68 degrees, the hottest December temperature on record.

That year, last minute Christmas shoppers strolled Burlington's Church Street Marketplace in t-shirts and shorts.

The coldest Christmas this decades was in 2013, which had a low of zero degrees.

In the record books going back to the late 1880s, the hottest Christmas was in 1964, when it reached 62 degrees. No snow on the ground that holiday!

The coldest Christmas was in 1980, and it was brutal!  The low temperature was 25 degrees, and the high was minus 5, and that occured just after midnight.  Strong north winds made wind chills unbearable. On the bright side, there was nine inches of snow on the ground that year.

On Christmas Day, 1970, there was a whopping 32 inches of snow on the ground in Burlington. This was during the snowiest month on record.

The most new snow on Christmas Day was in 1978, when 16.9 inches fell on December 25 in Burlington.