Christmases Past and Future in Central PA

When I woke up this Christmas morning, we barely had any snow or ice on the ground here in State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map]. But when we traveled 10 miles to the Northeast to Milesburg, where we spent Christmas day, there were several inches of snow and ice on the ground.

Comparing to previous Decembers, I would characterize the pre-Christmas weather this year as pretty cold, with a good bit of ice and not much snow. Certainly cold compared to 2006, when we had experienced an abnormally warm December, the warmest since I moved to Pennsylvania.

If you look at the official data... we've had "White Christmases" (defined here as snow on the ground) 3 times since the turn of the millennium, with one true White Christmas (snow falling on Christmas morning) in 2002.

2008: 3.7" Snow Before Christmas*, 0" On Ground 12/252007: 7.9" of Snow in December, 0" On Ground 12/252006: 0.4" of Snow in December, 0" On Ground 12/252005: 15.0" of Snow in December, 2" On Ground 12/252004: 0.4" of Snow in December, 0" On Ground 12/252003: 18.4" of Snow in December, 0" On Ground 12/252002: 19.3" of Snow in December, 1" On Ground 12/25**2001: 0.8" of Snow in December, 0" On Ground 12/252000: 7.3" of Snow in December, 3" On Ground 12/25

*All snow totals are from Dec. 1 - Dec. 25 **Daily snow total was 7 inches; this reading was taken at midnight Christmas Eve

But for a more in-depth look, I look back at my blog entries. Last year, in 2007, we had rain, and plenty of it -- with considerable local flooding on December 23rd. In 2006, it actually snowed on Christmas, when I was in Milesburg, PA at my parents-in-law's house, but didn't accumulate. We had just missed it - I took a photo where the ground was white 2 days before Christmas but a heat wave with rain afterwards melted it all before Christmas. And way back in 2005, my first year of blogging for AccuWeather.com, we had a little freezing rain Christmas morning.