C'est Vrai: Ho, ho, ho. Will we get snow?

Weather forecasters are saying that the strongest El Niño in 50 years could bring a white Christmas to places that typically do not see snow in December, but the odds are still loaded against Santa needing snow shoes in south Louisiana.
Prognosticators such as Accuweather’s Ben Noll say the El Niño-driven weather pattern will send frequent storms from the West Coast into the Deep South and then up the East Coast. Another forecast gives a 25 percent chance of snow in New Orleans on Christmas.
I wouldn’t bet the mortgage money on either prediction. It is indeed quite likely that El Niño will send us a wet Christmas, but it’s far more likely that we will see rain rather than snow. I’ve got weather records that are even older than me, and, according to them, we’ve never had a Christmas with widespread snowfall across south Louisiana, and very few when even a few flakes might — might — have fallen.
Statistically, we’re more likely to have snow for Valentine’s Day than for Christmas in south Louisiana.
According to records for the Lafayette, Christmas Day temperatures have dipped to freezing or below only 25 times since 1896: 32 degrees in 1935 and 1947; 31 degrees in 1900, 1918, 1953, 1995, 1998, and 1999; 30 degrees in 1920, 1968, and 1996; 29 degrees in 1896, 1924, 2013; 28 degrees in 1961, 1963, and 2004; 27 degrees in 1966 and 1980, 26 degrees in 1905, 1906, and 1985; 25 degrees in 1990; 19 degrees in 1989; and 12 degrees in 1983.
Christmas 1983 was the coldest on record, when we warmed up to only 25 degrees by mid-afternoon. That Christmas came in the middle of an Arctic blast that chilled Lafayette to 27 degrees on Dec. 23, 15 degrees on Christmas Eve, 12 on Christmas Day, and 16 degrees the day after that.
Lots of folks will also remember 1989, when the thermometer dipped to 9 degrees on Dec. 23 and 11 on Christmas Eve, before warming up to a balmy 19 on Christmas morning.
There was plenty of ice associated with both the 1983 and 1989 cold snaps, but no Christmas snow.
As is so typical of Louisiana weather, the Christmas before that frigid holiday season was the warmest ever. Christmas Day warmed up to 78 degrees in 1982. In fact, Acadiana has heated to above 70 degrees on Christmas Day at least 30 times—which is more often than it has fallen below freezing.
The thermometer at Lafayette measured 70 degrees in 1931, 1957, 1960, and 1992; 71 degrees in 1916, 1937, and 1971; 72 in 1948; 73 in 1926, 1936, 1950, and 1954; 74 in 1904; 75 in 1901, 1932, 1944, 1946, and 1969; 76 in 1917, 1922, 1934, 1941, 1955, and 1964; and 77 in 1987and 2008.
Since 2000, the average temperature on Christmas morning has been not quite 40 degrees and the afternoon high has been 55.5.
It’s rained on Christmas about a fourth of the time over the last century, but the precipitation has usually come in the warmer holiday seasons, when it wasn’t cold enough to generate snow. In 1981, a big rain started late on Christmas Day, but most of it fell on Dec. 26 and Dec. 27. Over those two days there was an average rainfall of 15 inches over a 100-mile-wide band stretching diagonally across the state from the southwest to the northeast.
It was both wet and cold on several occasions, but no widespread snowfall came of it.
The two best chances of snowfall appear to have been in 1924 and 1887. The 1924 weather report says it was 29 degrees with 0.06 inches of precipitation. In 1887, according to the Louisiana Weather Review, “a few flakes of snow, the first in seven years, fell on Christmas Eve in Grand Coteau and Breaux Bridge reported light snow at 10:30 a.m. on December 24.” In both instances, the little bit of snow melted quickly and didn’t hang around for Christmas Day.
In 1949, Christmas Eve temperatures dropped into the upper 20s across much of south Louisiana, but there was no precipitation that might have lingered. The 1915 report shows less than a quarter of an inch of wintry precipitation on Christmas Eve, but the temperature stayed above freezing; if there was snow in the mixture, it didn’t last.

Contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121. Washington LA 70589.