Snow and ice could impact travel Tuesday, but Philly likely won’t have a white Christmas

Those dreams of a white Christmas in Philadelphia will likely remain a fantasy this year, but for folks traveling the morning of Christmas Eve, the weather could be a little bit frightful.

Travelers in the Philadelphia region may see traffic impacted Tuesday morning by light snow and possible freezing rain, which could leave a light glazing of ice during the early commute. That wintry mix is likely to arrive in the area sometime between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., as temperatures remain below freezing, before moving on by noon, said Joe DeSilva, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.

But we’re likely to get off light.

Ice “accumulation would minimal, maybe a couple hundredths of an inch,” DeSilva said. “Snowfall, maybe up to half an inch.”

The weather service, however, has issued a winter weather advisory for the Philadelphia region due to the potential for freezing rain. Temperatures, DeSilva said, should warm throughout the day to a high of about 40 degrees, which will limit the potential travel impacts as Christmas Eve celebrations get going.

Wednesday — Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah — is likely to be even milder, with temperatures topping out in the upper 30s, and no snowfall or ice accumulation expected in the Philadelphia region. Conditions, the weather service said in its forecast Monday, are likely to be “benign,” though there could be some cloudy skies at night.

“Overall, it looks like a pretty nice Christmas,” DeSilva said.

But not a white one, which the weather service defines as one or more inches of snow on the ground by 7 a.m. on Christmas. Philadelphia is no stranger to that holiday spectacle, but in any given year, we have about a 9% chance of seeing it, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.

As DeSilva put it, white Christmases in the region are “not rare, but not common.”

The Philadelphia area hasn’t seen a white Christmas since 2009. That year, just days before the holiday, a storm dumped nearly two feet of snow on the region, leaving roughly 8 inches of snow on the ground on Santa’s big day.

And accumulating snowfall on Christmas is even more of a distant memory. The region hasn’t had an inch or more of snowfall on Dec. 25 since 2002, when about 1.1 inches of the white stuff blanketed the region, according to the weather service.

Despite Monday’s frigid weather, which brought the season’s lowest temperatures so far, the Philadelphia area is historically fairly mild in December, with average highs remaining in the mid-40s. And we typically see high temperatures go above freezing on 28 of the month’s 31 days.

The rest of the week is likely to remain similarly mild, with a “lack of any significant weather” through the weekend, according to the weather service’s forecast.