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| Snow tumbles down from pine trees on Christmas Day, 2017, which is the last time measurable snow fell on Christmas in most of Vermont. |
If the forecast is correct, the high temperature today in Burlington will be around 23 and it looks like the low this morning was 14.
There likely will be no snow or other precipitation around, aside from possible snow flurries near Lake Champlain and maybe in the northern Green Mountains.
Christmas, 2024 will be an exception to a trend. Just like the rest of the year, the holiday is gradually getting warmer in Vermont thanks in large part to climate change.
Under the warmer, "new normal" the expected high temperature in Burlington today would be 32 degrees and the low would be 18. On averaged, we'd see 0.7 inches of snow, melted down to the equivalent of 0.08 inches of rain.
In making my case for our new "tropical" Vermont Christmases, this post is a little statistics heavy, but it's telling as to how things change. We'll also take a look back at Christmases that, unlike this year, brought us some pretty extreme weather.
SANTA ON THE BEACH
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| A festive Church Street, Burlington, Vermont in a Christmas season several years ago |
That made Highgate the warmest place in the Lower 48 of the United States at that hour. Hotter than Key West, Miami, Phoenix or Los Angeles, even.
The warmest low temperature on Christmas Day was 45 degrees in 1964. That was one of just 15 Christmases in which the temperature never got below freezing for the whole day, midnight to midnight. Four of those balmy Christmas nights have happened just since 2014
Fifty-seven Christmases since 1900 have gotten above freezing for at least part of the day, . Here's another sign that climate change is making itself known. Twelve of the past 20 Christmases have gotten above freezing.
The fact that this year's holiday temperature will remain below 32 degrees is yet another exception to the recent rule of toasty holidays. Yet today's chill would have been pretty much de rigueur in past decades.
TRADITIONAL COLD AND SNOW
Since 1900, we had temperatures at or below zero temperatures on 21 Christmases. It has only reach 0 once in Burlington on Christmas since 1993. (It was 0 in 2013)
The coldest was in 1980, when it was a very unpleasant 25 below. The coldest high temperature on Christmas was minus 5 also in 1980. That day, the -5 high was at 12:01 a.m., the temperature continued to fall all day. Despite blue skies, the deep cold and north wind made the day miserable. By the early morning of the 26th, it was 26 below in Burlington, 31 below in St. Johnsbury and 35 below in Sutton, Vermont.
The most snow on the ground on Christmas morning was in the brutal winter month of December, 1970. Snow depth on the holiday was 32 inches in Burlington and 43 inches in Montpelier. The last time there was more than 10 inches of snow on the ground Christmas Day in Burlington was in 2007.
The snowiest Christmas in Burlington was 1978, when 16.8 inches fell. I was in high school at the time and I remember it as actually quite a nice day - if you weren't driving. It snowed really hard all day, but winds were light and temperatures were comfortably in the 25 to 30 degree range.
Southern Vermont's snowiest Christmas was in 2002. Woodstock was slammed with 27 inches of snow.. Woodford reported 20 inches. About a foot and a half came down on Rutland. This storm completely missed northern Vermont. Burlington received barely an inch of snow that day.
Measurable snow has fallen on 37 Christmases since 1900. Snow enough to measure has fallen on Christmas only once since 2005. (There was 3.5 inches on December 25, 2017).
BIG EVENTS
There's been a couple Christmases that marked the start of some pretty big weather events.
In 1969, Burlington residents awoke to a frigid Christmas morning with a low of 16 below and nine inches of snow on the ground. Snow depth that morning was closer to a foot and a half elsewhere in Vermont due to a large snowstorm that hit on December 21-22. Skies grew increasingly cloudy and snow broke out toward evening.
This marked the start of one of Vermont's most severe winter storms on record. Burlington received 29.7 inches of snow, which had been the largest snowstorm in the city's history. (Since then, the Pi Day Blizzard of March, 2017 and a lake-enhanced snowstorm of 33 inches on January 2-3, 2010 eclipsed that mark).
In the 1969 storm, an incredible 45 inches of new snow buried Waitsfield. Snow depths across much of central and western Vermont reached three to four feet with drifts as high as 30 feet. Most roads shut down, and pretty much the only traffic in Vermont for a time was snowmobiles.
Eastern Vermont got moderate amounts of snow which changed to a devastating ice storm.
In 1917, Christmas Day brought a brief respite from what had been an incredibly cold December. It reached 41 degrees early in the day before a sharp cold front sent temperatures plunging through the day.
By midnight it was 13 degrees, but the temperature kept going down to create one of the Vermont's most intense cold snaps on record. Daily lows in Burlington from December 27 to January 3 were -12, -16, -23,-25,-19, -13,-15,-12
On December 30, 1917 ,it was 43 below in Bloomfield, 42 below in Cavendish, minus 41 in Northfield and minus 40 in Chelsea.
The winter of 1917-18 is Burlington's coldest on record to this day, with an average temperature from December 1 to February 28 just 12 degrees.
Christmas, 1933 was similar to 1917. Burlington started off mild, with a reading of 43 degrees. Temperatures once again plunged all day, and through the next day. The mornings of December 29 and 30 reached 29 below in Burlington, still the second coldest temperature on record in Burlington.
Bloomfield reached minus 50, which still holds the record for Vermont's coldest temperature ever recorded.
Let's just thank our lucky stars that we have no extreme weather coming up right after Christmas this year. Just chilly through Friday, then unfortunately some rain or freezing rain by Sunday.
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