If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas in metro Atlanta, you will be dreaming for a long time — but maybe not forever!
According to the National Weather Service, the last time the city got any measurable snow on Christmas Day was in 2010, the first time in over 100 years. Before then, the Peach State hadn’t seen snow on Dec. 25 since at least 1881. (Record-keeping in Atlanta dates back to 1878.)
Just over an inch of snow fell at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in 2010. Not only did it snow in metro Atlanta, but it snowed up to a half-inch from Columbus to Macon. The heaviest snowfall was recorded in the northern mountains, where between 4 inches and 8 inches were recorded.
Credit: David Goldman, AP
Credit: David Goldman, AP
Fourteen years ago may have been the last time we got any Christmas snow, but it’s hardly the last time the holiday has been ridiculously cold in the ATL. The record low temperature for Dec. 25? Zero degrees in 1983.
But what about the warmest on record? That would be 75 degrees in 2015. That was the year after the infamous “Snowpocalypse” that hit the Southeast on Jan. 28, 2014.
That toasty weather from Christmas 2015 didn’t last long. A month later, as much as 6 inches of snow fell in far North Georgia, with lower accumulations as far south as the middle part of the state, according to the NWS. The next few winters also brought snow to the South, just not on Christmas Day.
Some may remember the enormous amount — for the south, that is — of snow that fell in the winters of 2016, 2017 and 2018, when the northwestern suburbs were blanketed under several inches.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
As for Christmas Day, though, it’s not just snow that made Georgia weather history. According to the NWS, a huge ice storm struck northeast Georgia in 1962, knocking out power to thousands of homes for up to 30 hours.
Two years later, in 1964, a tornado touched down in Cordele, a small town along I-75 halfway between Macon and Tifton. The roof was blown off a National Guard Armory and several stores were damaged as the tornado hop-skipped over parts of Cordele, the NWS reports.
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