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Will Denver have a white Christmas? With most of the city wearing just shirts and shorts in mid-December, that question sounds more and more ridiculous.
We’re still far enough out from Christmas to hold out hope for snow, but as each sunny day of 60-degree weather goes by, that hope keeps melting away.
While cities like Chicago and Houston dealt with freezing temperatures on December 15, Denver’s temperature tied a record high for that day at 68 degrees. According to 9News meteorologist Chris Bianchi, Denver topped 60 degrees for the eighth day in a row today, December 16, marking the first time since 1939. Not only that, but the Denver metro and Front Range are now facing Red Flag Warnings from the National Weather Service on Wednesday, December 17, with high winds, hot temperatures and low humidity creating favorable fire conditions. According to the NWS, relative humidity will drop as low as 15 percent on December 17.
Denver usually gets more snow in March and April than in December and January, historical data shows, but it doesn’t take a weather anchor to see that we’re off to a bad start this month. As it stands, we’re more likely to have a wildfire than precipitation. There is still a little more than a week to go before Christmas, however, and if Denver weather is anything, it’s spontaneous.
What Denver Forecasts Say About Christmas Week
According to the NWS, Denver technically has a white Christmas about once every three years, with at least one inch of snow on the ground on Christmas 46 times since 1900, and twelve times since 1995. From a historical perspective, those chances weren’t terrible going into the winter.
“If having a white Christmas means having one inch or more of snow on the ground on Christmas Day, then the chances are about 37 percent,” part of an NWS analysis reads.
But the weather of Christmas past only means so much as the day approaches, and early forecasts for Denver are still dry.
According to 9News, AccuWeather, Apple Weather and the Weather Channel, Denver’s chances of precipitation sit at a cool 0 percent from December 22 through December 24. There are some forecasts giving Denver as high as a 9 percent chance of precipitation on December 21, but with such warm temperatures expected, we’d likely see rain instead of snow if anything fell. On Christmas Eve, Denver could see a high of 68 degrees, according to 9News, and all four forecasts show that Denver could hit 70 degrees at some point next week.
Predictions start to fluctuate on Christmas, however. On December 25, 9News and Apple Weather show a 2 to 3 percent chance of precipitation and high temperatures ranging from 64 to 68 degrees. Meanwhile, AccuWeather currently shows a 0 percent chance of precipitation on Christmas, but a high of just 53 degrees. That’s hardly reason to be optimistic, but it still shows a snowball’s chance of colder weather and precipitation.
As a wise man named Lloyd Christmas once said, “So, you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
