Don’t get your hopes up for a white Christmas, Chicago

It may have snowed on Halloween in 2019, but it looks like the white stuff will be skipping Christmas this year.

Temperatures around Christmas look to be unseasonably mild this year, according to the latest forecasts from the National Weather Service.

“There’s going to be a warming trend over the weekend and into next week,” meteorologist Andrew Krein said.

Tuesday and Wednesday will see temperatures in the 20s and mid-30s, typical for this time of year, but temperatures will rise over the week and stay up through Christmas, Krein said. Although he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of snow altogether — stranger things have happened, after all — Krein added that the likelihood of snow on Christmas was “about as close to zero you can get without saying zero.”

Though this Christmas will be the warm, it won’t hold a candle to Christmas 1982, where the temperature topped out at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, Krein said. Interestingly, the year after had the coldest Christmas on record — -17 degrees Fahrenheit.

The snowiest Christmas in Chicago occurred in 1950 when 5.1 inches of snow fell on Christmas Day, Krein said.

Almost 47% of Christmases in Chicago between 1885, the earliest year that the weather service started keeping record, and 2018 have not had any snow, Krein said. It looks like 2019 will be another snow-free Christmas.