White Christmas History

[ChescoWx]

Here in Chester County we have a 1 year of every 4 or 25% chance of having snow on the ground on Christmas Day. The last 10 years are aligned with that average as we have had 3 White Christmas Days since 2009. The most recent Christmas being 2017 with 0.3" / 2012 with 2.0" and 2009 with 4.0". The greatest snow depth recorded on Christmas was the 25" of snow on the ground Christmas Night following a 21.2" Christmas Eve storm that including frequent lightning and thunder on Christmas Eve 1966 -  this followed the 8.8" that fell earlier that week on the December20th 1966. The next snowiest Christmas was from a storm that began at 8am on Christmas day back in 1909 and continued into the next day ending at 6:30am on the 26th (for both of these events I have attached the coop reports for the month for both years including W.T. Gordon's note from 1909 that it was "snowing furiously and very deep snow" and the Philadelphia Electric Company COOP in Coatesville reporting that "highways in bad shape" .  Of note the Christmas 1909 Blizzard represents our 2nd greatest individual snowstorm in Chester County history as 38" had accumulated by the time the storm ended on the 26th. The only greater snowstorm in our history was the 3 day Blizzard of February 12-14, 1899 when a whopping 45.3" of snow fell with temps mainly in the single digits during the storm duration. Of note temps remained below freezing the remainder of December 1909 with 39" of snow on the ground on New Years Eve.

The coldest Christmas Eve and Day occurred back in 1980 when the morning lows both days were below zero with the 24th at 2 below and Christmas Day at 6 below zero. Of interest just 3 years later in 1983 we also had below zero Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with lows of 1 below and 3 below respectively. That Christmas Day in 1983 was also the coldest Christmas Day with a high of just 6 degrees above zero. By contrast the warmest Christmas Eve was just 4 years ago in 2015 when we recorded a high temp of 68.5. Christmas Day 2015 was also short sleeve weather with a high of 66.7 just off the record high for Christmas Day of 67 degrees set back in 1964. The wettest holiday was the 1.63" that fell on Christmas Eve 1986 and the 1.92" that fell on Christmas Day 1967.

No matter your weather I hope all of you have a Merry Christmas!!

All the best,

Paul

December 1966.pdf December 1909.pdf