Here's how often Edmonton has seen a white Christmas since 2000
A white Christmas in Edmonton is magical, and with the holidays just around the corner, we got curious as to how often we do (or don’t) have plenty of snow on the ground.
Sometimes our memory likes to recall many Christmas Days as perfectly snow-covered and picturesque here in Edmonton, and we got curious about just how many times YEG has seen a white Christmas so far this century.
Daily Hive chatted with Alysa Pederson, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), on how each Christmas Day in Edmonton has shaken out since 2000.
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The snowiest Christmas Day in Edmonton was in 2013, when a snow depth of 33 centimetres was recorded at the Edmonton International Airport station. It was a different situation just a couple of years ago, however, with 2023 being one of the three brown Christmases recorded so far this century.
The other two brown Christmas years in Edmonton were 2005 and 2002. 1999 was also a brown Christmas, a little fun fact for you!
How does ECCC define a brown Christmas?
A brown Christmas in the eyes of ECCC means a small amount of snow may be on the ground, but anything less than two centimetres of snow depth takes it into the brown Christmas category.
Pederson added that the snow depth is recorded at seven local time on Christmas morning, and with the recording only taking place at an ECCC weather station, sometimes the statistics tell a different story than what the public can see.
“We had a snow depth of one centimetre at the Edmonton airport up until Christmas Day in 2023, and the city was as brown as can be; there was no snow in sight. It says one centimetre, but it really wasn’t, it was one centimetre of ice, wherever they measured at the airport.”
When it comes to Edmonton, Pederson added that we’re way more likely to get the snow and keep it on the ground compared to somewhere like Calgary, which can experience warm spells due to chinooks.
Edmonton has endured a bit of a dry spell for snowfall amounts so far this season, accumulating just six centimetres of snow, with all of it falling on Friday, Nov. 7.
Looking ahead to December, the forecast is hinting that it will be relatively normal, just maybe a little bit cooler than normal for parts of the province, while precipitation seems to be a bit lower as well.
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Edmonton typically sees 11.9 millimetres of precipitation in the month of December, while days with snow greater than 0.2 centimetres are a little over eight days out of the month. Anything significant and greater than five centimetres in a snowfall event in Edmonton in that month historically comes to 0.5 days.
“December is not typically our wet time of year. That’s obviously June; October can have some precipitation because that’s when we’re in our seasonal transition. But once we get into December, you might have a storm or two, but you’re not really getting a significant number of storms coming through,” Pederson said.
“December is not really when we get a snow event; it’s not a common thing. Typically, our biggest snowfall events happen in the spring, in March and April.”
There is also such a thing as a “perfect” Christmas in addition to a white Christmas, with ECCC stating that to meet that threshold, two centimetres of snow or more must be on the ground on Christmas morning, and snow must be present in the air sometime Christmas Day. Between 1955 and 2007, just 20 per cent of Christmas Days in Edmonton experienced such an event.
If you were curious about more data, check out ECCC’s historical Christmas snowfall data online.