Which happens more often – White Thanksgiving or White Christmas?

Last week, my sister-in-law Emily asked me which we experience more often – a White Thanksgiving or a White Christmas. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I wanted to look it up to have some actual numbers before I told her something definitive. Figuring out information for Christmas is simple enough since Christmas is always on December 25. Thanksgiving takes a bit more work.

In figuring out which dates to look at, I was intrigued to learn that Thanksgiving wasn’t always the fourth Thursday in November. Apparently, Thanksgiving was traditionally held on the last Thursday of the month, which in some years put it as the fifth Thursday. This changed while Franklin D. Roosevelt was president when Congress fixed it the holiday to the fourth Thursday. That was quite a fun fact to discover, but for this post I’m only looking at the fourth Thursday in November. Furthermore, we’re defining a white holiday as a minimum of one inch of snow on the ground.

Pendleton has more complete snow records than other cities in the Columbia Basin, so the specific numbers I give you will be from there. Pendleton gets a few more snow days than the Tri-Cities and Hermiston because it is higher elevation and closer to the mountains, but which holiday has more snow days is likely to be the same.

And the winner is – Christmas!

This is what I expected since December is colder on average than November, though the difference isn’t large. Of course, even in Pendleton there haven’t many snow days on either holiday. Snowfall records go back to 1892, and in the 126 years between then and last year neither holiday even reached a dozen years with snowfall recorded.

Pendleton, Oregon
White Thanksgiving – 7
White Christmas – 11

These represent 5.5% and 8.7% of years since records began respectively, which isn’t much to begin with. Those who want snow for both holidays may have enjoyed 1921, which had 10″ on the ground on Thanksgiving and 8″ on the ground for Christmas. There is one other year, 1985, that also had snow on the ground for both days.

Will we have a White Christmas this year? It’s still too early to tell, but I feel pretty confident in saying that you can have snow for Christmas if you spend it in West Yellowstone, Montana. We should start to get a vague idea of what Christmas may bring about two weeks out, with specifics becoming more clear within seven days of the holiday. As is always the case with this time of year, if you plan to travel be prepared for winter conditions and plan for extra time.

If you have a weather question for me, feel free to reach out through Tri-Cities Weather on Facebook or find me on Twitter where I’m @markaingalls.

The featured image is a satellite image of snow and clouds in the Columbia Basin on Christmas 2008 from NASA.