Weather
By Dan Skeldon
If you’ve ever dreamed of a white Christmas in South Jersey, you know that they are historically difficult to come by. In fact, there’s only a 5 to 7 percent chance of having at least one inch of snow on the ground on Christmas morning, the definition of a white Christmas. But if by some chance you’ve ever dreamed of a white December 5th, your odds increase dramatically.
South Jersey snow lovers take note. Or perhaps you’re already aware of a little snow magic synonymous with the fifth of December, which has oddly seen a flurry of flakes since the turn of the century. Since the year 2000, no December day through Christmas brings a better chance for snow each year. And actually, it’s not even close. Snow in South Jersey is five times more likely on December 5th than any other of the first 25 days of the month. And over the last 20 years, the fifth of December doesn’t just bring coatings of snow, although there have been a few. But 5 times since the year 2000, there has been a sizable snow on that magical date, when two to as much as six inches of snow blanketed the landscape.
Contrast that with Christmas Day, a difficult day for eternally hopeful white Christmas dreamers. Not only have the last 20 years been fairly snowless on December 25th, never recording an inch or more of snow. But as long as records have been kept, it has never snowed more than an inch on Christmas Day, and reliable records go back over 75 years. The few white Christmases that we’ve had in South Jersey have come from snow that fell days or even a week before. Our last white Christmas in fact, 11 years ago, came from some icy and crusty leftover snow from a blizzard back on December 19, 2009.
Is there any science behind the snow magnetism that the fifth of December offers? Actually, no. It’s simply coincidence. Rather, a string of coincidences that reached its peak back in the early 2000’s. I remember it well, as it was when I first moved to South Jersey back on the first of December in 2002. It’s of course no secret that I am snow lover, and this snow lover was moving to the Jersey shore from the mountains of Vermont, paradise for those fond of what the Green Mountain ski resorts dub “white gold.” But as a meteorologist and realist, I fully never expected to see snow again in early December.
Mother Nature promptly taught me a lesson, as 5 inches of snow fell in South Jersey on December 5th, 2002. One year later, another 5 inch snowfall fell on the exact same day, and I noted the seemingly innocent coincidence. While the streak was temporarily broken in December of 2004, another two inches of snow on December 5, 2005 got us back on track. 2006 was snowless, but four more inches fell in 2007. And so it went. By the time the decade ended in 2009, 5 of 7 years brought measurable snow on the persistently snowy calendar day.
The new decade may have caused December 5th to lose some of its magic, until just a few years ago when that long last magic was rekindled. Back in 2018, 5 inches of early season snow covered the South Jersey snow-scape on December 5th. Sure enough, it was the only snow we saw all month.
Add it all up, and there’s a 25 percent chance in the last 20 years of seeing an inch or more of snow on the fifth day of December. No other December day before Christmas has more than a 5 percent chance of such a claim.
If you happen to glance at the calendar, that date is coming up this weekend. And as I write this column just after Thanksgiving, there is sure enough the threat of a storm for the weekend of December 5-6th. And there will be some colder air around in the days leading up to any potential storm too. But to get snowfall in early December, you have to “thread the needle” just right. That means the storm track has to be perfect, and there has to be just enough cold air meeting up with that perfect storm track. While things can certainly change, I don’t see the needle being threaded this year. After all, it is 2020. And whatever “normally” happens, we’ve learned to expect the opposite this year.
But the prospects are there for occasional shots of cold the first half of December, and occasional opportunities for storms. While it could very well just be periodic bouts of rain over the next few weeks, I’d say the chances for snow in early December are better than normal this year. But keep in mind that normal on any given day, other than December 5th, is a 0 to 5 percent chance for some white stuff. So remember, the bar is set pretty low.
Meteorologist Dan Skeldon has a degree in meteorology from Cornell University. He has forecasted the weather in South Jersey for the last 18 years, first on the former television station NBC40 and then on Longport Media radio. Dan has earned the American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval for Broadcast Meteorologists, and now does television broadcasts on WFMZ-TV in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
