What are the odds SC will see a white Christmas? Here’s the latest NWS forecast
As close as the Midlands will come to a white Christmas this year is hearing Bing Crosby sing it.
“The news isn’t good,” Steve LaVoie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Columbia, said Friday. “We’re more likely to have a green Christmas than a white Christmas.”
He put the odds at less than 1%. To further make the point, he said, “highly unlikely.”
That doesn’t mean no precipitation.
The forecast calls for “gray with some or all of South Carolina seeing rain,” said Frank Strait, the severe weather liaison for the S.C. State Climate Office.
LaVoie expects rain to begin in Columbia on Christmas night.
The Midlands is just not prone to a holly jolly snowscape. National Weather Service records begin in 1887 and no significant snowfall has occurred in the Midlands since. There was a trace in 1924.
The most significant weather event the State Climate Office recorded in recent years was heavy snow along the coast in 1989 from Dec. 22-24, 1989. Myrtle Beach had 14 inches, Charleston 8, Beaufort 5.
“Life along the Carolina coast ground to a halt as extraordinary amounts of snow overwhelmed the modest amount of snow removal equipment,” the National Weather Service said on its website.
This was the same year Hurricane Hugo devastated the South Carolina Lowcountry, coming onshore in September as a Category 4 storm just north of Charleston.
Other winter storm events on Christmas Day reported by the climate office include:
Snow mixed with sleet in 1899 in a few western South Carolina areas but it melted as it fell.
A significant ice storm - mixture of rain, snow, sleet and freezing rain fell on 24th through early morning 25th in 1945 (8.5” Caesars Head, 5.2” Spartanburg, 2” Greenwood).
Two years later, a trace to 6 inches at Caesars Head and Long Creek fell in the Upstate.
In 1953, wet, cold and blustery winter conditions with a few snow flurries in the northern part of the State.
In 1975, the Upstate saw freezing rain.
In 1998, trace reported in the Upstate.
In 2004, a late evening mix of rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow developed over central and coastal South Carolina. When the sun rose the next day, a light coating of ice had disrupted travel and caused power failures.
In 2010, 3 inches of snow fell in Pickens.
In 2020, a few inches fell in the Upstate.
Then there’s the truly bizarre, known as June in December, when temperatures rose into the 70s, caused by the jet stream bringing winds from the southwest rather than the usual northwest. It stayed that way for two weeks.
If you truly want that magic white Christmas featured in holiday movies, you’ll have to head out to the Rocky Mountains and northern parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.