2024 white Christmas forecast predicts what parts of USA will see snow

With only five days until Christmas, weather forecasters now have a pretty good idea of who will wake up to a blanket of snow on the big day.

With few exceptions, it appears that what you see on the ground today is what you'll see on Christmas morning, though one final stripe of snow is possible just before the holiday in portions of the Northeast, AccuWeather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham told USA TODAY Thursday.

Overall, a white Christmas is now a guarantee across much of the mountainous terrain of the West, including the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies, according to AccuWeather.

Where else is a white Christmas likely?

In addition to the mountains of the West, a white Christmas also looks promising in a few areas of the East:

"Things look good for the few towns and cities around the Great Lakes that have been buried in feet of lake-effect snow this month, including Erie, Pennsylvania, which has had its snowiest start to winter on record, " AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Lada said.

T​here is also a good chance of a white Christmas from North Dakota and northern Minnesota into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as well as parts of northern New England, Weather.com said.

Last-minute white Christmas possible

There will be one more storm early next week that could deliver some last-minute Christmas snow, forecasters said.

"A weak storm is likely to move quickly eastward from the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley during the day on Dec. 24 and then through the central Appalachians, the mid-Atlantic and New England from the evening hours on Dec. 24 to early on Christmas Day," AccuWeather meteorologist Paul Pastelok explained in an online forecast.

"This storm will bring mostly rain but can bring some mixed frozen precipitation, especially over the northern tier and central Appalachians, where a wedge of cold air is most likely to linger," he said.

The National Weather Service in Cleveland offers some hope for snow in the forecast from Monday-Wednesday of next week, potentially even on Christmas morning: "A mix of rain and snow is anticipated, with the best potential for snow each night through the following mid-morning hours."

Not surprisingly, the weather service in Austin/San Antonio wryly said in a forecast released Thursday: "Right now as it stands, there is a good chance of scattered thunderstorms for Christmas Eve. So those wishing for a white Christmas will likely need to wait until next year."

White Christmas 2024 map, forecast

Accuweather has published maps and a forecastshowing its predictions of where is most likely to have a white Christmas on Dec. 25, 2024.

What is a white Christmas?

It need not snow Dec. 25 to fit the weather service's definition of a white Christmas: There just needs to be at least 1 inch of snow on the ground. A trace of snow also doesn't count, Weather.com reported.

On average, about 38% of the Lower 48 has an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day, according to 21 years of data compiled by NOAA.

Since 2003, those percentages have varied widely from year to year, from only 17.6% last year to a whopping 63% of the contiguous U.S. in 2009, Weather.com said.

Why do we care about a white Christmas?

The USA's fascination with a white Christmas dates at least to 1942, when Bing Crosby crooned the wistful song in the film "Holiday Inn." Written by Irving Berlin, the song's lyrics bring out a romanticized image of Christmases past, "just like the ones I used to know."

More:Why are Americans obsessed with a white Christmas? Blame Dickens and the Little Ice Age.

A second movie – White Christmas, also with Crosby – came out in 1954.

Going even further back, scholars say that the fascination can be traced to a swirling blizzard of nostalgia, music, popular literature, the rise of Victorian mass culture ‒ and even the Little Ice Age.