Everyone seems to want to know if Bing Crosby’s song will materialize this year. Are you dreaming of a white Christmas or hoping for a December thaw? First off, let’s define “White Christmas” as 1″ of snow depth on Dec. 25. Some people like to say it has to snow on Christmas, but to truly have a white (ground covered) Christmas, this 1″ depth is a good measure.

The longest snowfall records in Northeast Kansas, going back about 63 years are kept by the National Weather Service in Topeka. These records indicate that since 1946 there has never been more than 6″ of snow on the ground on Christmas Day.

Of course, even just yesterday someone was telling me how their kids used to play in snow up to their waist on Christmas Day. Sounds like a nice memory, but that’s not the case. That 6″ snow depth was in 1983. More recently, we had a 4″ snow depth in 2007 which makes it the 2nd highest snow total for a Christmas Day.

When you put all of the statistics together, we average out an 11-25% chance of a White Christmas across Northeast Kansas. That basically means that 1 out of every 8-10 years we have 1″ of snow on the ground for Christmas. So what about this year? Can we beat the odds and actually have snow on the ground. Well, the most recent computer models are coming into a pretty good agreement on a storm system moving across Kansas on Wednesday, Dec. 23 (officially Christmas Eve Eve). As you can see from the maps below, we’ll have the low pressure pass well south of us through Oklahoma, leaving us on the cold side of the storm with a decent amount of precipitation.

Who knows, maybe we’ll get that White Christmas after all!