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Dreaming of a white Christmas? There's hope, depending on where you live
An unidentified person braves the weather to do last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve in Omaha, Neb., on Dec. 24, 2009. That year, a powerful storm spread snow, sleet and rain across the nation’s midsection.
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Nati Harnik/AP
If you’re hoping to wake up on Christmas morning to white fluffy stuff on the ground, there’s a chance you might get your wish.
Christmas magic won’t bring snow to the majority of the country, but some parts might just get lucky, according to Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center.
“If you are one of those people that does get a chance to enjoy a white Christmas, definitely feel very lucky and very blessed to be able to enjoy something like that, as it looks like a lot of people this year will not be able to,” Kleebauer tells NPR.
While hopes for a white Christmas are on many minds each year, experts say the chances of experiencing one may diminish in the future, in part because of shifts in weather patterns driven by global warming.
Here is what the weather is likely to look like on Christmas Day across the country and how a changing climate may impact Christmases to come.
Will you have a white Christmas?
The areas that have the highest chances for a white Christmas — when there is at least 1 inch of snow on the ground on Christmas morning — will be out west in the Rockies, around the Great Lakes and in higher terrain in northern New England, Kleebauer says. Parts of the Appalachian Mountains across the high country of West Virginia, western Maryland and into western Pennsylvania also have a chance for snow.
There’s hope for a white Christmas in a few parts of the U.S.
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AccuWeather
There’s also a high chance of “heavy precipitation and high elevation snow” in northern California and parts of the Pacific Northwest on Christmas Eve that will start again on Dec. 26, according to the NOAA Climate Prediction Center, or CPC.
“A storm system in the Pacific Northwest could bring mountain snow as Santa is making his rounds, and the CPC features a moderate potential for Heavy Snow Hazards in the northern Rockies, especially in the Cascade Mountains and the Bitterroot Range of Idaho,” Erica Grow Cei, meteorologist and spokesperson for the National Weather Service, tells NPR.
Most of the country is also expected to have temperatures that are “milder than average” on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, according to NOAA. Temperatures are expected to be near normal to slightly above normal across portions of the Plains and into the southeastern portion of the country. States including Texas and Florida are forecast to see temperatures in the 70s.
This map by the Climate Prediction Center shows areas at risk of heavy snow from Christmas Day to the end of the year.
NOAA/NWS/www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov
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NOAA/NWS/www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov
So far, 2024 has been the warmest year on record globally and is likely to beat the record set just last year, according to NOAA. The year is also on track to be one of the warmest two years ever recorded in the contiguous U.S.
Warmer temperatures could impact future white Christmases
Historically, parts of the northern U.S., the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada Mountains have had the highest likelihood of experiencing a white Christmas, according to Kleebauer and a map by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
The last time the majority of America woke up to a white Christmas was nearly 15 years ago, Kleebauer says. On Dec. 19, 2009, a large snowstorm blanketed parts of the Northeast starting in Virginia and dumped more than 12 inches of snow on Boston, with snow lingering through Christmas Day. Snow also fell in other parts of the country during that time, resulting in “large snow coverage across the United States, even into those areas that don’t see white Christmases too often,” he says. Texas was one of those areas.
But because of warmer temperatures driven by climate change, the coldest temperatures are becoming less frequent in parts of the country.
This map by NOAA shows the historical probability of at least 1 inch of snow on the ground on Dec. 25. The agency says actual weather conditions on Christmas Day will vary each year.
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When looking at changes in monthly and seasonal temperatures — along with the number of snowy days — “it is clear that winter is the fastest warming season across 74% of the United States, with the northeastern United States and Upper Midwest,” says Elizabeth Burakowski, a research assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. has seen rapidly warming temperatures, according to the federal government’s most recent National Climate Assessment, released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“As the world’s climate has shifted toward warmer conditions, the frequency and intensity of extreme cold events have declined over much of the US, while the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme heat have increased,” the assessment says. “Across all regions of the US, people are experiencing warming temperatures and longer-lasting heatwaves. Over much of the country, nighttime temperatures and winter temperatures have warmed more rapidly than daytime and summer temperatures.”
As temperatures rise, more precipitation is expected to fall as rain instead of snow, particularly in areas in the western part of the U.S., the assessment also found. These temperatures will also lead to “earlier snowmelt, altered rates of snowmelt and evaporation directly from the snow, and longer snow-free periods,” the assessment says.
So far this winter, snowfall across parts of the U.S., including areas of the Prairie Pothole region including North and South Dakota, southern portions of Minnesota and Wisconsin, has been below normal, according to Shawn Carter, Winter Hydrology Desk lead at NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. Government data shows that snowfall in the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades are well above normal, while the Rockies are seeing a mix of normal to slightly below normal levels, Carter also says.
White Christmases are a sentimental favorite, but they are also a powerful example of how the world’s climate is changing.
“Seeing changes in the chances of a white Christmas is one of so many ways we may experience climate change,” Burakowski says. “When we come together as a community to address climate [change], we’re preserving so much more than snow on Christmas day.”
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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