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Like the ones you used to know
Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Dec 20, 2006 by BILL McKEOWN THE GAZETTE
Statistically speaking, the chances of waking up to a white Christmas in Colorado Springs are only slightly better than ol' Bing Crosby's coming back from the dead and singing his saccharine hit to you, personally, in your family room.
OK, so the chances of snow on Christmas are a little better than those of the resurrection of the crooner famous for the 1940s hit "White Christmas." But they're usually bad enough to provoke at least one breathless "buy-a-car-and-get-it-free-if-it-snowson- Christmas" deal from a local car dealer. That should tell you something about the odds.
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The National Weather Service has studied weather records back to 1948 and has discovered the climatological chance of an inch or more of snow falling here on Christmas Day is just 3 percent. In fact, that has happened only twice in the past 58 years.
The last white Christmas in Colorado Springs was in 1987, when residents awoke to an inch of snow on the ground and watched 0.7 inches of snow fall during the day. (The weather service rounded that up to a full inch, in the spirit of holiday giving.)
If you're willing to settle for just a smidgen of snow on Christmas, the odds improve. A trace of snow has fallen on Christmas 13 times over the past 58 years, putting the climatological chance of a trace of snow on the holiday at 22 percent.
With such lousy odds, the weather service dug even deeper into its statistics to compile records of Christmases when snow was on the ground, using a liberal interpretation of a "White Christmas."
Using that looser standard, snow was on the ground 24 Christmases since 1948, and 15 of those days featured snow depths of at least an inch.
But don't expect even that this year, meteorological technician Randy Gray said. The forecast for Christmas calls for partly cloudy skies, with a high temperature from 36 degrees to 46 degrees, warm enough to melt any snow blown off the windshield of Santa's sleigh.
Gray said the paucity of snow on Christmas Day is not some plot by the Grinch. It just so happens Christmas comes at a time of year when moisture is in short supply here, he said.
He said the cold temperatures and the Earth's angle to the sun minimizes precipitation during December, January and even February.
The chance of precipitation is actually much greater in September and October, which helps answer an eternal question: Why is the weather always so miserable on Halloween?
"It's like standing in traffic," he said. "October happens to be a place where there's going to be traffic. By December, the traffic is elsewhere."
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com
Copyright 2006
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