Despite the roaring success of songs that croon about a snow-covered December 25th, a snowy Christmas morning is a rarity around the world. Canada is one of just a handful of countries that routinely has decent odds of waking up with snow on the ground after Santa’s visit.
But what exactly counts as a ‘white Christmas’, anyway? It turns out, like any good bureaucracy, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has a hard-and-fast rule governing that special designation.
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Snow on the ground is a mainstay of Canadian Christmases.
Most major cities from coast to coast have better than a coin-flip’s chance of seeing snow on the ground on the morning of December 25th, with snow a virtual certainty across the North and much of the Prairies.
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The only regions where white Christmases are more of a treat than a tradition are the country’s milder corners, including southwestern British Columbia, southwestern Ontario, and portions of the Atlantic provinces. A snowstorm that blanketed Metro Vancouver early on December 25, 2021, was noteworthy as it was the city’s first snowy Christmas in more than a decade.
ECCC’s forecasters define a white Christmas as one where there’s an official report of at least 2 cm of snow on the ground at 7:00 a.m. on December 25th.
It doesn’t matter whether the snowpack is weeks old or if there’s fresh snow falling as kids tear open the gifts that Santa left for them. If observers measure 2 cm of snow on the ground that morning, it’s officially a white Christmas.
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ECCC also documents which cities experience a “perfect Christmas,” which occurs when there’s 2 cm on the ground while fresh snow is falling on the morning of the big day. While a white Christmas is relatively common, a perfect Christmas is more elusive.
While cities like Regina and Thunder Bay are virtually assured to have snow on the ground on December 25th most years, those communities only notched a perfect Christmas about one-third of the time between 1955 and 2007.
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*Thumbnail image courtesy of cunfek/Getty Images.