The Old Farmer’s Almanac has issued its weather forecast for the next year. Its short-term predictions address the question on many Montgomery County minds: Will 2022 will bring a white Christmas to local landscapes?

The last local snowy Yuletide, as measured by the National Centers for Environmental Information (Asheville, N.C.), was in 2009. Snow from two feet of accumulation earlier that week was still on the ground.

Christmas morning of 1998 had kids and parents awakening two inches.

But the whopper that continues to stick in local memory is Christmas Eve 1966, when more than a foot fell throughout S.E. Pa. from Dec. 24–25. It turned out to be the whitest white Christmas on record.

Currently, however, the Almanac’s Dec. 23–26, 2022, regional forecast calls for “rain and snow, chilly.” Whether that amounts to a depth hearty enough to leave visible reindeer hoof prints has yet to be determined.

Next month has a few Almanac snow mentions for the Eastern Seaboard:

• Jan. 6–13: snowy periods north, rain and snow south
• Jan. 17–22: rainy, mild, flurries
• Jan. 29–31: snowstorm, cold

Beyond that, the publication sees temperatures below normal and precipitation above normal, with the coldest periods expected to be late-Jan. and most of Feb.

More information on our chances of a white Christmas is at the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

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Hard to think about a white Christmas without envisioning the final scene of the
1954 Paramount Pictures film based on the same-titled Irving Berlin tune.