{"id":3074,"date":"2009-12-25T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2009-12-25T06:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=3074"},"modified":"2022-05-21T06:19:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T11:19:14","slug":"white-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/white-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"White Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It&#8217;s Christmas and I&#8217;m not likely to greet many visitors on Twelve Mile Circle today. Nonetheless I thought I&#8217;d post something quirky but topical. Consider this a little gift for those of you who did decided to spend some quality time on the web today. Well, between attending church, opening presents, and pursuing holiday cheer, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">An Unusual Occurrence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re having one of those rather rare events in Northern Virginia, a true White Christmas. It doesn&#8217;t happen very often, and in fact I can&#8217;t remember the last time it did. Nonetheless, we have snow on the ground on Christmas day. Here is the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/graphics\/blog\/snowman.jpg\" alt=\"Christmas Snowman. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Actually I took this photo yesterday evening, Christmas Eve. However it&#8217;s still dark outside and this will have to suffice. Trust me, the snow did not melt overnight. We&#8217;re supposed to have lots of cold rain this afternoon so I need to enjoy it while it lasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Often Does it Happen?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I started wondering about the probability of a White Christmas. Unbelievably, someone created a Wikipedia page <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/White_Christmas_(weather)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">devoted to this very topic<\/a>. They define a White Christmas as one with snow on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words it doesn&#8217;t actually have to snow on Christmas day. It&#8217;s fine if unmelted snow from a prior event remains on the ground. I also love that in the United Kingdom,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;&#8230;for the purposes of betting, a Christmas is considered &#8216;white&#8217; if a single snow flake is observed falling onto the roof of the London Weather Centre in the 24 hours of 25 December, even without a perceivable quantity of snow.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure why that amused me so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The page includes a chart of probabilities for several cities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. It even links to a great map published by the National Weather Service showing White Christmas probabilities throughout the Lower 48. This is my new favorite map for the week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.weather.gov\/lsx\/stloffice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/graphics\/blog\/white_christmas_probability.gif\" alt=\"Probability of a White Christmas. Map by National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office - St. Louis; Public Domain.\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I learned that my hometown has an annual probability of about 13%. So it&#8217;s an unusual phenomenon but not nearly as rare as I imagined. It&#8217;s on a par with Vancouver, BC and Bradford, England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now go spend some time with your family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s Christmas and I&#8217;m not likely to greet many visitors on Twelve Mile Circle today. Nonetheless I thought I&#8217;d post something quirky but topical. Consider this a little gift for those of you who did decided to spend some quality time on the web today. Well, between attending church, opening presents, and pursuing holiday cheer, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[501,282,732],"tags":[156,1952,1951,1950],"class_list":["post-3074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-nature","category-weather","tag-christmas","tag-probability","tag-snowman","tag-white-christmas"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>White Christmas - Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Everyone seems to want a White Christmas. Obviously there&#039;s a higher probability of that in some places than others.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/white-christmas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"White Christmas - Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Everyone seems to want a White Christmas. 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