With Thanksgiving winding down, some among us are hoping for a “White Christmas” as the capstone for the 2002 holiday season. But State Climatologist Harry Hilacker says the odds aren’t very good for the pro-snow crowd. Hilacker says it’s usually a 50/50 proposition that we have snow for Christmas, but those odds are reduced this year because an El Nino weather pattern is dominant, which means the winter will be warmer than normal. The odds are we’ll get more rain than snow in an El Nino year, and when it’s warmer, the snow we do get won’t stay around long. Hilacker says Iowa rarely gets snow on Christmas Day. A “White Iowa Christmas” usually occurs because there’s been a big snow earlier and the snow cover stayed around, according to Hilacker.
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