So far, the Tri-Lakes region appears like it will almost certainly live up to its historically wintry reputation, according to Matthew Clay, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Burlington, Vermont office, which serves the Tri-Lakes region. This is unlike a majority of the nation — both in terms of population and land mass, excluding Alaska — which not expected to have snow on the ground come Christmas Morning.

“We pretty much give (the Tri-Lakes) a 100% chance of a White Christmas for this year,” Clay said Sunday afternoon. “It looks like it’s set in stone at this point.”

He also pointed to data collected from Saranac Lake between 1954 and 2023, which shows a historical White Christmas probability of 88%.

In addition to the snow at the end of last week, another relatively weak storm system is expected to track over the area tonight, producing a light snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches for the Tri-Lakes by Tuesday morning.

Temperatures between today and Christmas are not expected to reach above freezing, ensuring that tonight’s snowfall and what is already on the ground will not melt before Christmas — welcome news for Santa as he’ll have smooth sled landings in this neck of the woods with the fresh coating of snow.

“Given all of the recent snowfall that we’ve had and we’re not looking at temperatures getting above freezing through the next several days,” Clay said.

For those traveling, favorable odds of a White Christmas this year extend throughout most of upstate New York, Vermont and interior regions of New Hampshire and Maine. White Christmas odds decrease the closer to the coast, with southern New England and the major East Coast cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington forecasted to miss out.

While “White Christmas,” is commonly understood as there being snow on the ground on Christmas, the term has an official l meteorological definition: at least 1 inch of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on Christmas Day, according to Clay.

“The reason 7 a.m. is important is because we (meteorologists) use Zulu time as well,” he said. “The whole point of that is so that everywhere across the world measures things at the same time. Everyone takes their snow depth measurements at 12z (Zulu time) for the day.”

Zulu time is a universal standard time measurement used by militaries and many in the scientific community as a means of avoiding confusion when communicating and coordinating between different time zones. This area’s time zone, Eastern Standard Time, is 5 hours behind Zulu time, which bases its time off of the Prime Meridian, or line of 0 degrees longitude. Therefore, 12z equates to 7 a.m. in the eastern U.S. time zone.

That lag from Zulu time is reduced to 4 hours during the Daylight Savings Time period, which runs from March 9 to Nov. 2, 2025.

Clay said that the consistency and uniformity in weather observations — including when weather balloons are launched to gauge atmospheric conditions — is critical to building accurate data.

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Holiday travel

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Aside from tonight’s snow — which could lead to slippery spots Tuesday morning, especially on secondary roads and untreated surfaces on Tuesday morning — the rest of the week looks generally quiet weather-wise, resulting in minimal weather-related travel concerns, according to Clay.

“Everything looks pretty docile,” he said. “Following this clipper system that exits the area Tuesday morning, we’re looking at another pretty big high-pressure system (which tends to bring calm weather conditions) settling into the region. It’s looking like we’ll see quiet weather for the second half of the week.”

Clay noted that temperatures are expected to moderate throughout the week, with high temperatures expected to reach above freezing for the Tri-Lakes area by Friday.

“It does look like we’ll be trending a bit warmer by the end of the week,” Clay said. “Nothing unseasonably warm by any means. … It might cut away a little bit of our snow but it’s not looking like it will be warm enough at this point to get rid of it all.”

Clay noted that the Climate Prediction Center — a branch of the National Weather Service that focuses on long-term forecasts — was forecasting above-average temperatures for New Year’s week throughout the Northeast.

“It doesn’t give us a specific sense of just what those temperatures will be, but it’s meant to be more of what the general trends are showing.”