AccuWeather White Christmas Forecast 2025: See If Your City Will Wake Up to Snow on December 25

AccuWeather’s newly released White Christmas forecast gives snow lovers fresh hope—and offers travelers a heads-up—about exactly where a holiday blanket of white is most (and least) likely in 2025. Forecasters say the core snowpack is locked in across the central and northern Rockies, with elevations from Montana to Colorado enjoying near-guaranteed snow on the ground Christmas morning. The same goes for the usual lake-effect corridors downwind of the Great Lakes, where persistent bands have already piled up accumulations that should survive a brief pre-holiday warm-up. But the picture turns murkier east of the Mississippi. A milder Pacific air surge is poised to sweep across the Plains and into the Midwest and Northeast the week before December 25, threatening to melt early-season snow cover from Kansas City to Boston. AccuWeather lead long-range expert Paul Pastelok warns that “snowmen may wilt” as temperatures spike, though deeper drifts in interior New England and the Upper Midwest could hold on. All eyes now shift to a late-December storm signal. Current model guidance targets December 23-25 for a potent system tracking from the Southern Plains toward the Great Lakes. If the storm follows a colder route just north of Interstate 80, fresh snow could sweep into Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and upstate New York during Christmas Eve night, boosting odds of an official “white Christmas” (defined by the National Weather Service as at least one inch of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on December 25). A track farther south would introduce warmer air, flipping many of those same cities to a chilly rain while keeping snow confined to the northern tier. Regional breakdown: • High-confidence snow zone: Northern & central Rockies, Wasatch Range, Cascades, Sierra Nevada, northern Minnesota, the U.P. of Michigan, interior northern New England. Probability: 70-95 percent. • Moderate odds: Western Great Lakes, interior Northeast, higher Appalachians, Black Hills, western Dakotas. Probability: 40-70 percent. • Low odds: I-95 corridor from Washington, D.C., to Boston; lower Midwest; most of the South and central Plains. Any existing snowpack here is vulnerable to pre-holiday thawing unless the Christmas-week storm swings colder at the last minute. Travel implications: 1. Mountain passes across the Rockies and Cascades will stay snow-covered; chain controls and potential closures are likely for I-70 in Colorado, I-80 in Wyoming and I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass. 2. Major Midwest hubs (O’Hare, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit) sit on the razor’s edge. Monitor forecasts up to departure day; a 50-mile wobble in storm track could flip conditions from wet runways to plowable snow. 3. Northeast rail and highway travelers should budget extra time on December 24: a transition from rain to snow late in the day could create sudden icing from Pennsylvania into New England. Climate context: AccuWeather notes that 45 percent of the Lower 48 had snow cover in early December, well above the 38 percent long-term average. Yet rapid thaws in recent years show how quickly that advantage can vanish. In 2023 only 17.6 percent of the contiguous U.S. enjoyed a white Christmas, the lowest share this century. Bottom line: If you live in the Rockies or within a lake-effect belt, plan on waking up to a postcard scene. Elsewhere, keep the sleds handy and the forecast bookmarked; one decisive storm just before Santa’s arrival will determine whether 2025 delivers a classic White Christmas or merely a wet one.