Healthy Snowpack Has Increased our Chances of Freezing Fog & Maybe A White Christmas

Trevor Miller (Age 7) Enjoying His Snow Day

It has been a fun snow day with my kids, but they thought it was too cold to go sledding so we just went out and had a nice big lunch. There is a hot chocolate advisory in effect tonight. The roads will likely re-freeze with temperatures back in the teens. One thing to watch out for tonight is freezing fog. It can cause hazardous conditions on the roads. Freezing fog can be dangerous but is also beautiful. Here is a picture of what it looked like last February. Can you pick out the squirrel?



To have freezing fog you need to have clear skies, mainly light wind, high humidity, and very cold temperatures. We should reach the criteria for this but forecasting freezing fog can be difficult. We will see if it develops tonight and if it does at least we will be ready for it.

A lot of folks are asking about our chances of a White Christmas. Well, after our big weekend snow it looks like we will at least have a patchy White Christmas, but I am forecasting mainly a rain event this weekend along with above freezing temperatures that will try to wash our snow away. The snow cover does tend to lock in the colder air longer and this will give us a gradual meltdown. This is good news for our rivers and those that are hoping we at least have a little snow on the ground for Christmas. Typically we have a 55% chance of having at least a Patchy White Christmas every year.

I do know that we are going into a much quieter pattern so even though I cannot guarantee a White Christmas, I feel much more comfortable forecasting a bright Christmas. This will probably make most of us even more excited because December has been very rough on travelers and we have already had almost 3 times our normal snowfall. The La Nina weather pattern is known for big swings in the weather and it looks like one of those big swings for the quieter and warmer is on the way as we head into the last week of December. I will have more on the pattern change and just how snowy 2007 has been. Make sure to tune in and I will have more here on the weather blog. The easiest mode of travel here in the Lafayette area the last couple weeks has been by snowmobile. Here is a great picture of how they are dealing with all the snow in Carroll County.


Thanks to Ryan Dyer