CARIBOU, Maine — Be merry, but freezing rain this Christmas Eve morning also merits being mindful during travels.
Meteorologist in charge at the Caribou National Weather Service Office Rich Okulski cautioned on Tuesday morning that freezing rain was slated to begin last night and continue through the first half of Christmas Eve.
It won’t be warning-criteria risky, but it will be risky,” he explained, urging travelers to take care while driving.
Caribou is slated to get .015 inches of freezing rain spanning from last night to mid-day today, but it takes .5 inches of rain before an ice storm warning would take place, as Okulski explained. Once the freezing rain turns to rain, Okulski is estimating 1 to 1.5 inches of rain for Caribou.
With the atmosphere providing the wet stuff instead of the white stuff this holiday, Okulski was confident in stating that Santa wouldn’t have any problems with the weather.
As of yesterday morning, the snow depth in Caribou was 15 inches and Okulski estimated that today’s rain event paired with warmer temperatures today and tomorrow could reduce the snowpack by half — “That will put a dent in it, but it won’t make it go away,” Okulski said.
Even if Mother Nature doubled the rain for a longer period of time, “we’d probably get down to an inch or two of ice,” he described.
A rainy Christmas isn’t particularly the norm, but it’s not outside the realm of possibilities.
The Gulf of Maine isn’t that far away, Okulski said, and ocean temperatures are still in the 40s; a good wind can bring those temperatures up to the northern part of the state.
“It happens periodically in the winter, this time it just happened over Christmas,” he said.
With the rain and the warming temperatures, Okulski also hopes folks will be mindful of the river as there is potential for ice jam(s) to form.
As the Caribou National Weather Service Office keeps track of the regions climatological data, they offered some Christmas weather perspective on their website. Meteorologist and shift supervisor Corey Bogel wrote: at Caribou, where weather records began in 1939, the warmest Christmas was in 1964 and also 2003 with a high of 48F. The lowest temperature of 26 below was observed in 1975. The only time that the high temperature failed to reach zero was in 1983 when the high was only 1 below. The normal high and low on Christmas Day is 23F and 6F.
What are the chances of a white Christmas? There have only been six years (1957, 1973, 1998, 2001, 2006 and 2010) with less than an inch of snow on the ground. An inch or more of snow has been observed 92 percent of the time on Christmas morning. The average snow depth is 8 inches, and 1989 had the deepest snow pack with 29 inches of snow on the ground. The snowiest Christmas was in 1997 when 8.7 inches of snow was observed.
