What a difference a year makes in Buffalo weather.
Last year, a white Christmas was a cinch throughout much of Western New York, given all the snow that fell the few days prior and during the historic and crippling Blizzard of 2022.
This Christmas will have a much different look and feel. Not only will there be no snow on the ground for Buffalo and most of its suburbs, but temperatures are expected to reach the mid-50s throughout Western New York. That’s 20 degrees warmer than the average Christmas Day high temperature for Buffalo.
It will be the warmest Christmas in Buffalo in more than 40 years – since it was 64 degrees in 1982, which is the warmest day ever recorded in Buffalo for Christmas since records started being kept in 1893.
It’s expected to be a cloudy day with rain showers starting close to midnight and continuing into Tuesday – a day also slated to be mild with temperatures in the low 50s.
By Christmas last year, nearly 100 inches of snow had already fallen in the early winter season of November and December, according to the National Weather Service office stationed at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Cheektowaga. But this year has been quiet, with less than 8 inches of snow to report in Buffalo.
“Last year’s blizzard will go down as the longest duration blizzard in U.S. history for any metropolitan area,” said Patrick Hammer, chief meteorologist for WGRZ-TV. “Fast forward to this year, and it’s going to be in the mid-50s for Christmas Day, and we have had a scant amount of snow to this point. The overall weather pattern for December last year versus this year is just polar opposite, and not just for that storm but the overall weather pattern.”
The mild weather around Christmas is nothing new.
In recent years, the region has experienced above-average temperatures at Christmas, Jim Mitchell, a meteorologist with the local National Weather Service office, recently told The Buffalo News.
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