This will be the most memorable week of extreme winter weather centered around Christmas in a generation.
And it WON'T all be pretty. I'm making this claim based on the cumulative impact of cold, wind, and snow during the busy holiday travel days leading up to Christmas (Thu-Sat).
A powerful winter storm - and likely a blizzard in some areas - will mark the arrival of an arctic blast that will make holiday travel nearly impossible in some areas, and any last-minute shopping miserable for most.
This is my early call on accumulations for the primary storm system moving through the Plains and Midwest Thursday and Friday. The map does not factor in any blowing or drifting of the snow that may occur through the weekend.
If you're wondering about a white Christmas, I will post an update to the probabilities posted in this story on Tuesday. Spoiler alert: Chances are much higher across Missouri and Illinois (>80%), but a bit lower from Oklahoma to Tennessee (<30%).
The bigger story during the upcoming holiday travel period is likely to be the extremely cold air mass that follows. Subfreezing temperatures will dive as far south as the Texas Gulf Coast and the I-4 corridor across Florida.
Following the initial surge of arctic air, the combination of snow cover and a weaker front or two will keep temperatures below normal for several days following the Christmas holiday for the majority of the eastern two-thirds of the nation.
An arctic front will be plunging south through western Canada Wednesday, then across the northern and central Plains Thursday. An upper-level disturbance will ride this polar jet stream south and spawn a low-pressure system over the Mid-South.
A tightening pressure gradient, plummeting temperatures, and sufficient moisture will lead to expansive wintry precipitation, primarily in the form of snow and blowing snow from the Southern Plains to the Ohio Valley as the low moves northeast. A swath of heavy snow and near-blizzard conditions will be possible northwest of the storm track, which at this time is most likely to occur from the eastern Ozarks to the western Great Lakes Friday and Saturday.
Frigid temperatures and wind chills will catch up to the snow quickly. This will be an abnormal snow event for many cities at a more southern latitude where only marginally cold enough temperatures usually accompany the flakes. For example, the majority of snowfall in St. Louis will occur at temperatures lower than 20º. Subzero temperatures and wind chills will follow the precipitation for many days, leading to one of the coldest Christmas holidays in many years.
If you would like a personal forecast for an area you feel is not represented well by the maps or summary above, feel free to message me on Facebook or Twitter.
On the 12th day before Christmas, when all throughout the Midwest
Forecasts were teasing snow, but some say it's still a guess.
Poetic cuteness aside, significant changes are coming to the weather pattern in the next two weeks that will have many snow lovers rejoicing. Others will just be bothered by the bitter cold. Nonetheless, chances of a white Christmas are more than twice as high (compared to normal) this year from the Upper Midwest to the Southern Plains.
Confidence is high in a colder-than-normal holiday period for much of the continental United States. Credible forecast models all project below-normal temperatures for the seven days surrounding December 25 in all locations east of the Rockies. However, they do differ in the extent and magnitude of extreme cold (compared to normal) during this period, which is also likely a factor of timing.
The three images below show 7-day average temperature anomalies from multiple runs of the GFS (American), ECMWF (European), and CFS (NOAA).
Temperatures are likely to be at least 10 to 15 degrees below normal from the Northern Plains to the Mid-South on or around Christmas Day. The numbers could be a lot colder than that in some areas, depending on snow cover and the track of multiple storm systems leading up to the holiday.
Here's an example long-range forecast for St. Louis from the GFS. The red box is drawn around a projected stretch of more than a week with subfreezing temperatures (day and night). According to this model, temperatures might even not top 20º for 72 hours straight!
Details on exactly how cold, and for how long, will become more apparent in the days to come. And those specifics will be significantly related to who gets snow or not.
Chances of at least one inch of snow on the ground (or falling) on Christmas Day are more than two times as high as the 30-year average across a large area of the nation's midsection. The interactive graphic below compares the historical probability (1981-2020) to my 2022 forecast.
Cities such as Oklahoma City, Little Rock, and Nashville that historically have less than a 1 in 10 chance of a white Christmas have elevated probabilities of 20 to 30 percent this year. Chances are also more than two times as high (compared to normal) across the Ozarks and lower Ohio River Valley.
The Arctic air that has been bottled up in western Canada since Thanksgiving is about to be unleashed by the powerful storm system moving across the nation this week. It will then be driven farther south by another storm system next week (Dec 19-23), with potentially a third cold front delivering the "knock out" blow of arctic air deep into Dixie.
At this time, significant differences and inconsistencies in model solutions preclude me from posting details on when, where, and how much snow or ice may fall during the week of Christmas. I will be posting numerous times on those details as they become available, including credible modeling and road condition data from my employer Baron Weather.
But for now, just know that this year's Christmas will likely be much colder than normal (and possibly white) from Montana to Mississippi. Temperature anomalies along the west and east coasts are less certain, but an active jet stream pattern is sure to deliver bouts of cold and snow in those areas as well in the coming weeks.
