Will Illinois Get a White Christmas? Forecasters Say It Depends

The last thing in the world I want to sound like is a politician, but when answering the question of whether Illinois will get the white Christmas many want will depend on some key questions.

When it comes to a white Christmas for Illinois, I'd prefer not to look at recent forecasts

There are several reasons why I'd prefer to not look at computer models right now. First, we're two weeks away from Christmas as of the date of this writing which would make any future winter system very hard to accurately predict. Instead, I'd prefer to share what the National Weather Service has just dropped as they've looked at the probability of a white Christmas based on history.

Zooming into Illinois specifically, you can see that the "depends" part of the answer about a white Christmas is what part of the state you live in. There are no less than 4 different probability graphs that Illinois falls under from 11% to 25% all the way to 76% to 90%.

If you're a white Christmas fan, here's something to encourage you. We've seen snow much earlier in Illinois this year compared to recent years. The fact that many parts of Illinois still have snow on the ground from the storm a couple weeks ago makes it likely that any new system dropping snow would accumulate. In my non-meteorological opinion, you can kick the chances of a white Christmas in Illinois way up this year especially in the northern half of the state.