By Paul Yeager, author of Weather Whys: Facts, Myths, and Oddities
I’ve talked about the typical American obsession with a White Christmas before (Five Weather Seasons, The Romanticized White Christmas and Dickens Responsible for White Christmas?), and the “I love snow for Christmas season” has officially begun.
It’s nearly impossible to watch television for more than 20 minutes without seeing commercials filled with the white magic. Even advertisers love snow for Christmas–and the two months prior to it.
There’s one minor problem (in addition to the obvious fact that not everyone celebrates, or loves, Christmas): Most snow winter snow falls AFTER Christmas, not before and during Christmas.
Parts of the country, such as the Rockies and other mountains in the West, get an abundance of snow in November and early December. And snow is certainly a good possibility in much of the United States in December, but the greatest amount of snow occurs in January and February for much of the nation–by the time that most of us have been trained to hate snow.
By the way, here’s a map showing the current snow cover across North America, courtesy of the National Ice Center.
North America snow cover as of November 6, 2010
