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Long Island’s White Christmases: Past Snowy Holidays on LI

Written by Eric Anderson  |  21. December 2014

There’s nothing more festive than waking up on Christmas morning to a fresh blanket of snow covering the ground. And according to forecasters, we may be lucky enough to get a White Christmas this year! 
 
A major winter storm is set to hit the East and MidWest, starting on Tuesday and lasting through Christmas Eve night. Although this storm will most likely consist of just rain, there is still hope that it will turn to snow as the week progresses.
 
So when was the last time we got to enjoy a White Christmas on Long Island? Our memories were a little hazy, so we did some research and pulled up the last times Long Islanders have had a White Christmas - and we found that they are quite rare for our area.
 
We went all the way back to 1984, using Weather Underground’s Weather History Tool for two locations on Long Island - one in Suffolk and one in Nassau. There were just three times in 30 years with snow coverage on Long Island on Christmas Day.
 
2009
There may not have been fresh snow on Christmas of 2009, however this was the last time we had snow on the ground on Christmas Day - and we had a lot of it! There were 14 inches on the ground in part of Nassau County, and up to 11 inches on the ground in Suffolk County.
 
2002
Although it wasn’t a pretty day - mostly rain mixed with snow - most areas in Nassau and some areas in Suffolk were lucky enough to enjoy a light snow in the later part of the afternoon on Christmas Day. Even though this followed a day of heavy rain, we still got about 2 inches of snow coverage in certain areas.
 
1998
Yet another year where we had snow coverage but no fresh snow! There were just 1-2 inches of snow coverage on Christmas morning in 1998.
 
Do you remember any other days where we had snow on Christmas? Share in the comments below!
 
Photo by gmpelka1 via Free Images.
 
[Source: Weather Underground]

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