Odds are good for white Christmas in Calgary

If you're a born and raised Calgarian and it seems like there were more white Christmasesin the old days, you might be on to something.

This year there's a "small chance" of snowfall on Christmas Day, according to an Environment Canada spokesperson adding a smaller system could bring less than two centimetres. Temperatures should also turn more seasonal after the end of the current cold snap in Calgary.

Historical data from Environment Canada reveals that Calgary hadmeasurable snow on the ground for about 58 per cent of the Christmas days from 1955 to 2015.

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There was snow on the ground foreight out of 10 years in the '60s, and seven out of 10 years in the '70s.

But Christmas Day was white only five times in the '90sand justfour times in the firstdecade of the2000s.

And asfar as cozying up to the fire with a hot toddy while the snow gently falls on Christmas Day? That's quite rare.

How cold?

In the past six decades, it has only snowed on seven Christmas Days in Calgary. On all but one of those days, there was already snow on the ground.

As for how cold it could be onChristmas Day, Calgary being the land of the chinook winds, that's anyone's guess.

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The normal range for Dec. 25 is a low of about 14C and a high of about 2 C.

But it got down to28.9 C in 1971, and in 1947 it was a spring-like 14.8 C. In 1955, it shot from a frigid low of28.3 C to a high of 0.6 C later in the day.

Check out thegraphs below for a closer look at Christmases past:

• In the first, hover over the green line to see theaccumulation on the seven times it snowed on Dec. 25 since 1955. Hover over the red lineto see how much snow was already on the ground.
• On the second, click betweenthe high and low temperatures for Dec. 25 in Calgary over the past 60 years.