Christmas

This is a few days early, but here's a look at Edmonton's Christmas Day weather history.

Temperatures

In the last 30 years, the average high on Christmas day has been a pretty balmy -3°C, with an average low of -12°C. That bounces around a bit though, with 2008, 2012 and 2015 all being reasonably chilly and down around -20°C, while 2011 and 2013 were up above freezing.

The coldest-ever recorded Christmas was also the first recorded Christmas, with a low of -39.4°C back in 1880.

Precipitation

In terms of precipitation, Christmas day has been pretty free of snow and rain, with 2004 and 2014 being the only recent Christmases to record any snow.

Snow of the Ground

And I've mentioned before that I'm never sure exactly how much to trust Environment Canada's snow-on-ground measurement?

But from 1997 through 2005 Christmas snow was apparently pretty minimal, fluctuating between 0cm and 10cm for about a decade. More recently we've been fluctuating between about 5cm and 25cm.

As I write this on December 23, 2016, Environment Canada is showing 5cm on the ground at the International, and 2cm at Blatchford. Around downtown we're actually getting pretty close to "trace" amounts, with plenty of grass showing up in the sunny spots.