Will anywhere in Colorado have a white Christmas?
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Allison Sylte
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Here’s a look at the Christmas snow outlook for Colorado from State Climatologist Russ Schumacher. He is available for interviews discussing this forecast ahead of the holidays.
Across Colorado, the month of November was very wet and snowy, including an epic snowstorm across the eastern Plains. (Here at the Fort Collins campus, however, we mostly missed out on any exciting November weather.)
December 2024 thus far has been the opposite, with warmer-than-average conditions across almost the entire state and very little snowfall. On campus, we’ve had just 1.7 inches of snow for the season, compared to an average of 17 inches. As CSU heads into winter break, and students, faculty, and staff travel to spend time with family and friends, what do we see in the weather forecast, and how does it compare to historical holiday climate across Colorado?
If you like snow and the idea of a white Christmas, then you’re in luck – if you can make it to the mountains. The common definition of a white Christmas is having at least an inch of snow on the ground the morning of Dec. 25; with this definition, Colorado’s high elevations are a sure bet for a white Christmas.
As you go to lower elevations, the odds of a white Christmas also go down.
At the official Fort Collins weather station on the CSU campus, just over half the years since 1980 had an inch or more of snow on the ground on Dec. 25. But only two of the last six years have had a white Christmas; in both 2021 and 2023, there was rain on Dec. 24. In the Arkansas River Valley in southeastern Colorado and around Grand Junction and Palisade on the Western Slope, the percentage of years with snow on the ground on Dec. 25 drops below 10%.
So, what’s going to happen this year?
The days leading up to the holidays have been very warm, with high temperatures in the 50s and even some 60s (Fahrenheit) along the Front Range and eastern Plains – generally 10 to 15 degrees warmer than average for this time of year. The pattern of little to no precipitation has continued and will persist through at least Dec. 24. The warm, dry weather is certainly pleasant for being outside and for traveling but is not great for the snowpack and drought situation.
As last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor shows, most of Larimer and Boulder counties, as well as the western third of Weld County, are presently in a state of severe drought – with a pocket of extreme drought straddling northern Larimer and Weld. Northern Colorado currently has the worst drought conditions of anywhere in the state, with a lack of precipitation extending back to May.
However, the weather pattern looks to become more active starting around Christmas Day, and for the beginning of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa on Dec. 26. The high country should see some snowfall on the 25th and 26th, making it feel more like a winter wonderland in the mountains. At lower elevations, it’s less certain, but there is at least an outside chance of precipitation late on the 25th – though questions remain about whether it would even be cold enough to snow, or whether any precipitation would fall as rain instead.
The mountains should continue to see periods of snow through the last few days of December, and early January looks like it will have temperatures a little closer to the seasonal average, in contrast to the warmth we’ve had through December. (For reference, average high temperatures in early January are in the low 40s in Fort Collins, average lows in the teens.)
Could there be snowy holidays at CSU after all? Will mid-January bring the mythical “Stock Show weather”? We’ll have to wait and see.