Photo: Climate.gov
I love a whole lot of sunshine and too many Coronas and everything else that comes with beachside getaways, but I never understood people who decided to head south for Christmas. For parts of winter? Sure. But packing your bags and choosing palm trees over Douglas firs? That is one unconscionable bitch slap across Bing Crosby’s frozen face.
That being written, however much I want most of my posts to be about him, this particular one isn’t about that legendary crooner. No. This is about slashing your way through that ever-wonderful powder. Where does the United States government think it is going to land?
The map… shows the historic probability of there being at least 1-inch of snow on the ground in the Lower 48 states on December 25 based on the latest (1981-2010) U.S. Climate Normals from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Dark gray shows places where the probability is less than 10 percent, while white shows probabilities greater than 90 percent.
But what does that meeeaaannn?
The 1981–2010 Climate Normals are the latest three-decade averages of several climatological measurements. This dataset contains daily and monthly Normals of temperature, precipitation, snowfall, heating and cooling degree days, frost/freeze dates, and growing degree days calculated from observations at approximately 9,800 stations operated by NOAA’s National Weather Service.
Still more or less lost, but thank you for trying to explain, you savvy scientists. My takeaway is that these probabilities are just that: probabilities. We’re probably better off checking in with Weather.gov (which they themselves recommend) or whatever weather network you trust more than the government — I’m assuming there are plenty. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a nifty National Snow Analysis that might be helpful.
Anyway, have you been a good boy or girl this year? I haven’t, so I’m skipping town, driving north past the Hollywood sign up the 405, and tricking ol’ Kris Kringle into gifting me a couple bags worth of snow. (The legal kind, of course.)
