By definition, an official White Christmas is defined as having an inch or more of snow on the ground on Christmas day. Looking back at Louisville records, we’ve only seen nine “official” White Christmas’s in the past 120 years. That’s an average of only one White Christmas every 14 years! The last one occurred in 2004, so going by averages, were not do again until 2018!

The good news for snow lovers is that there have been a lot more “quasi” White Christmas’s here in Louisville. By “quasi”, I mean a Christmas when we’ve had some snow, just not quite a full inch. In fact even though we’ve only had nine “official” White Christmas’s dating back to 1884, we’ve picked up at least a trace of snow 47 times during that same period. That’s an average of one about every three years!

As far as the greatest snow on Christmas Day in Louisville, look no further than 2004. Following the Holiday Storm of 2004, where parts of Kentuckiana was buried under more than 30 inches of the white stuff, six inches was left on the ground in Louisville on Christmas morning. Before that, you have to go way back to 1890 when we picked up an estimated 5 inches for the second snowiest Christmas on record for Louisville. Another interesting statistic to note is the fact that we’ve picked up at least a trace of snow for the past seven Christmas’s, including 6 inches in 2004, 3 inches in 1999, 1 inch in 2000 and a trace in ’01, ’02, ’03 as well as ’05.

So can we keep this string going? That is a tough question, since we are still a week away from the big day. As of this writing, December 17th, current weather models are indicating the arrival of colder conditions as we head into the Christmas weekend. That bodes well for the possibility of frozen precipitation. However, we still need a storm system to work with in order for snow to form. At this time, we are tracking a possible system that could bring us either rain or snow just in time for Christmas. The big question will be how strong this storm becomes and exactly what track it takes. These two factors will make all the difference as to whether Christmas ’06 is a white one or not. Stay tuned…