Start Of Christmas Travel Looks Good, At Least (*Results May Vary)

This map shows the probability of snow through Monday, December 23.
If you're in a white area, it ain't going to snow. 

I'm heading out to South Dakota today to spend Christmas with the inlaws or outlaws, or whatever you want to call them. I'm totally psyched about today's trip.

Before you burglars get any ideas, there's people at the house and people watching it, too, so there's that.

One thing I don't like about traveling this time of year is the weather. It's usually abysmal. Flight delays, icy roads, sleet, snow, freezing rain, intense cold. It's not fun.

For those of you traveling to or from somewhere for Christmas, I'm happy to report an exception this year: Most of us will have a fine trip.  When you return towards New Years, all bets are off, because it's too soon to offer a decent forecast,

An odd, large ridge for this time of year in the upper layers of the atmosphere is giving us a break as we travel before and on Christmas.

This ridge is blocking any chance of a substantial storm, except in the Pacific Northwest and the far Southeast, especially Florida.

That means there's really no storms in most of the country that would delay flights screw up the roads or otherwise make a mess of things.  There is a fast west to east flow across the central and northern United States, so flights might be rather bumpy.  If you're sensitive to that, Dramamine might not be the worst idea.

For those of you who want a white Christmas, things are not looking good, though, at least for much of the snow belt. That ridge of high pressure is warm, and most areas east of the Rockies are in for warmer than normal weather. Read: Above freezing.

Unless you have a ton of snow on the ground, most or all of it will be gone by Christmas.

Here in Vermont, we're not going to get the most intense part of the warmth. But if your snow cover is really thin, you're out of luck. Temperatures in the valleys and mid elevations will get into the 30s Sunday and well into the 40s Monday, which would kill the snow cover.

Christmas will be seasonably cool in the low 30s, but there's nothing I see coming that would make it a white Christmas in the parts of Vermont that don't currently have much snow.

I will be in Yankton, South Dakota for Christmas. You'd think it would be a white Christmas there, but I'm dubious. It'll get up to about 50 there on Sunday, and though it will cool by the time December 25 rolls around, there's not much in the way of storminess coming there either.

But who knows?  Christmas miracles can happen. A weak system could dump a little snow on eastern South Dakota Christmas day Unikely, but possible.

I mentioned in the headline that this tranquil weather pattern will have exceptions.

An atmospheric river is coming off the Pacific Ocean, causing so much rain there is a flood risk for the next couple of days in parts of Washington and Oregon. The rain will taper off somewhat by Christmas, but it will still be damp and drizzly.

In the Southeast, an oddly strong storm will dump a good amount of rain in some areas, especially Florida and eastern Georgia and South Carolina.

By the time we start getting toward New Years, things begin to look stormier and the East and much colder in the middle of the nation but details are still sketchy. Stay tuned!