At a Glance

Christmas 2023 won't be snow covered for many in the U.S., even in the northern states. But there have been some bizarre snow-covered Christmases in the past.

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A​ white Christmas isn't a good bet for much of the country this year, but it's happened before in some bizarre places.

Christmas 2023 could be America's least snow-covered in at least 20 years. Meteorologists consider a white Christmas one in which there is at least one inch of snow on the ground Christmas morning.

A​s you can see below, the map of snow cover is pretty sparse, even in the northern U.S. Some locations typically a slam dunk for a white Christmas may be snowless this year, including:

-​ Caribou, Maine: Only six non-white Christmases since 1939, last happened in 2010

-​ Duluth, Minnesota: Only four non-white Christmases since 1916, last happened in 2006

-​ Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan: Only four non-white Christmases since 1931, last happened in 2015

(​MORE: White Christmas Forecast | America's Brownest Christmas In 20 Years)

Here are the strangest white Christmases we've seen. So, let's go back in history and flip this around, examining five places where snow is more unusual that once managed to keep it on the ground Christmas morning. In some of these places, snow was a once-in-a-lifetime event, much less happening in time for the holiday.

5​. Pacific Northwest (2008)

Did you know some places farther north than Minneapolis don't often see snow?

Despite the nearby Cascades picking up feet of snow, Seattle averages only six to seven inches a year. That's because a typical Pacific storm pumps in relatively warm, moist air into western Washington.

B​ut in late Dec. 2008, cold air spilled south out of Canada and locked into the Pacific Northwest for almost two weeks. During that stretch, Seattle picked up almost 14 inches of snow, leaving four inches on the ground Christmas morning, with light snow falling on the holiday.

P​ortland, Oregon, had 10 inches of snow cover on Christmas, by far its all-time record for the holiday, in a city with historically only a of a mere one inch of Christmas snow depth.

Despite the romanticism of a rare White Christmas here, this prolonged cold, snowy stretch was very disruptive. Chains were required on all vehicles in the Portland metro. Some cars were abandoned in snow drifts. Surface streets in Seattle remained snowpacked, rutted and slushy, leaving some helpless drivers skidding downhill into other cars. Flights were cancelled and passengers stranded at both Portland and Seattle-Tacoma International airports.

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Photographer Anthony Evora uses an umbrella to keep falling snow off of his camera Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008, as he takes pictures of winter scenes near the Space Needle in Seattle.

(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

4. Tucson, Arizona (1987)

Snow in the Desert Southwest's higher elevations is common. This includes Flagstaff (elevation 7014 feet) and Prescott (5045 feet), Arizona.

But, snow on the valley floor is more rare.

S​o imagine the excitement when 3.6 inches of snow fell from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day 1987 in Tucson, Arizona, the city's only white Christmas on record. Prior to that, there had been only 14 days in the city's history since 1894 that had an inch of snow on the ground.

Mt. Lemmon Ski Valley, at around 9100 feet elevation, offers skiing within about a 30 minute drive of downtown Tucson. But in 1987, you didn't have to make that drive to see snow during that surreal, historic Christmas.

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Paul Murphy and his girlfriend Zoom Dinh from Huntington Beach, Calif. walk through the snow-covered grounds at the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona, north of Tucson on Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010.

(AP Photo/Arizona Daily Star, David Sanders)

3. Blizzard, Southern Style (2009)

A photo like the one below may be something you see in the Dakotas, northern New England, or the mountains of the West in a typical blizzard. But it was taken in Oklahoma City.

Christmas Eve 2009 was Oklahoma City's snowstorm of record. An incredible 13.5 inches of snow, accompanied by wind gusts over 60 mph, brought the city to a standstill.

Will Rogers Airport was shut down, stranding passengers and workers. By the time the airport reopened Christmas Day, only one of three runways was cleared. A state of emergency was declared in Oklahoma. Stretches of Interstates 44, 40, and 35 were closed. Cars were abandoned in heavy snow on Oklahoma City freeways.

T​he snow even extended deep into Texas. Dallas-Ft. Worth picked up three inches of snow, its first measurable Christmas Eve snow. It was the first white Christmas in the Metroplex since 1926. Well northwest of Ft. Worth, up to nine inches of snow and wind gusts up to 65 mph whipped drifts up to five feet, stranding motorists in Montague County.

At one time Christmas Eve, was in a blizzard warning, from Texas to Canada.

D​ue in part to this expansive blizzard, 63 percent of the Lower 48 states was snow covered on , the nation's most expansive blanket of snow on the holiday since 2003.

Snow is piled high on a patio in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on Dec. 24, 2009.

(weather.com contributor Sylvia Cuff)

2. Florida, Southeast Coast (1989)

In December 1989, Arctic air plunged into northern Florida, changing rain to a wet snow in both Tallahassee and Jacksonville on Dec. 22 and 23.

In Jacksonville, one inch of snow covered the ground on Christmas Eve, the only time an inch or more snow depth has been measured there dating to 1893. The 1989 storm was one of only four days of measurable snow on record in Jacksonville. Technically, it wasn't a white Christmas. But don't tell that to .

T​his pre-Christmas storm brought the only white Christmas on record to both Charleston, South Carolina (four inches on the ground), and Savannah, Georgia (two inches on the ground). In each city, snow was on the ground four days in a row from Dec. 23-26. Imagine building a snowman on the South Carolina coast.

P​arts of the coastal Carolinas picked up more than a foot of snow, including 15 inches in Wilmington, its greatest snowstorm on record, according to weather historian Christopher Burt. Winds whipped snow drifts up to eight feet high in some areas of the coastal plain, Burt told weather.com.

T​o top it off, Wilmington, North Carolina, plunged to 0 degrees on Christmas Day, 1989, its all-time record low.

Snowfall reports (in color-coded dots according to the legend in the lower right) from the Dec. 22-25, 1989 South snowstorm.

(NOAA/NCEI)

1. South Texas (2004)

T​he photo below looks like any other wintry scene, except for the palm trees.

Snow covered the ground on Christmas Day, 2004 in Brownsville, Texas.

(NWS-Brownsville)

N​ot only did Brownsville, Texas - roughly the same latitude as Miami - pick up 1.5 inches of snow, its first measurable snow since Feb. 1895, but it did so on Christmas Day 2004. The characterized this confluence of events as "a historical first according to more than 150 years of weather data."

T​his freak event was also an all-time record snowstorm in Victoria, Texas (12.5 inches), and blanketed Corpus Christi with 4.4 inches. Generally, one to three inches of snow fell across the southern suburbs of Houston, south of Interstate 10, including Pearland and Friendswood. Four inches of snow blanketed Galveston Island and Jamaica Beach.

The satellite image, once skies cleared, of this South Texas Christmas snowpack remains one of the most bizarre weather images of my meteorological career.

Imagine the sheer wonder of kids who had never seen snow before experiencing this, on Christmas, no less.

Visible satellite image showing snow cover over South Texas and the Texas Coastal Bend on Christmas Day, 2004. (Note: Clouds detected by satellite are shown over the Gulf of Mexico and also show up as white.)

(NASA Worldview)

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He studied physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his Master's degree working with dual-polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.

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