Weather 
Will it be a white Christmas where you live?
The best chances for a white Christmas this week in the U.S. are across the northern halves of Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and the northern Great Lakes, according to Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center.
“Around the Adirondacks, across northern New England and into northern Maine. Those are the areas that look to be pretty good to have a white Christmas,” he said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines a white Christmas as at least 1 inch of snow on the ground on the morning of Dec. 25.
Other areas may still “hang on to the white Christmas idea” despite longer odds, Kleebauer added.
The chances decrease the farther west you go from Minnesota, and there’s a very low chance of no snow across much of South Dakota, Iowa and the South.
A substantial ridge of high pressure is expected to develop across the southern central Plains, Kleebauer said.
“That [ridge] is going to control so much of the weather pattern over the course of several days into next week, and we’re going to see temperatures are going to be well above normal,” he told CBS News on Friday.
Temperatures will be well above normal all the way into Minnesota and the Dakotas, though some of those areas already have a decent snowpack.
“It’s going to be really hard to melt all the snow, even with the warm temperatures across the northern latitudes up here across the upper Midwest,” Kleebauer said.
Overall, chances for a white Christmas will be limited farther South and West.
“The East is going to get a little bit lucky because it looks like the Northeast is going to remain at least near normal – they’re going to kind of stay away from the worst of the ridge,” he said.
Widespread snow still remains limited. As of Friday, only about 22% of the Lower 48 states were covered by snow, according to NOAA.
Look up the historical odds for a white Christmas where you are
Historically, the northern tier of states near Canada has the highest chances of a white Christmas, along with parts of the East such as northern Maine and the northern Great Lakes, which are all “pretty prone to having a white Christmas,” Kleebauer said.
The map below shows the historical likelihood of having at least 1 inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day at weather stations across the United States, according to data from NOAA.
It is based on the 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals, the most recent 30-year averages for climate measures such as temperature, precipitation, snowfall and freeze dates, calculated using observations from nearly 15,000 stations nationwide.
Dark gray areas on the map indicate places where the probability of snow on Christmas typically has been less than 10%, while white areas show probabilities greater than 90%.
Among major cities, Minneapolis-St. Paul has one of the highest chances of a white Christmas historically, at about 74%. Other northern cities have lower odds, including Cleveland (39%), Chicago (34%), Detroit (35%), Indianapolis (26%) and New York City (13%).
Southern states have had the lowest likelihood of a white Christmas.
“As you move south, there’s still a chance, but it definitely degrades, especially once you get, say, south of I-80,” Kleebauer said. “South of I-80 is where you really start seeing a precipitous drop off of the chances for a white Christmas, unless you’re in like the highest elevations of the Appalachian Mountains in like West Virginia.”
