Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Over the River and….

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The iconic image of Thanksgiving is sometimes represented by a sleigh drawn by horses ferrying a family through the woods to grandmother’s house for dinner.  Of course without snow covering the ground, that sleigh would not go very far.  The problem with that image, even locally, with one of the coldest climates in the lower 48 states, is that snow cover on Thanksgiving Day tends to be very light or none existent.

In Fargo, there has only been one Thanksgiving this century with snow covering the ground and that was two years ago when the official snow depth was 7 inches.  Previous to that year, to enjoy a true sleigh ride experience you would need to go back to Thanksgiving 1996 when two snow storms left us with a snow pack of 13 inches that year.

Other recent notable snow covered Thanksgivings include 1993 with 12 inches on the ground (with 8 inches falling that day) and in 1985 and 1977 with over a foot on the ground.

I’m Dreaming of a White Thankgiving

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Although white Christmas’ are expected in Fargo Moorhead, if by chance you dream of playing in the snow on Thanksgiving Day, you have been out of luck in recent years.  Nine out of the past ten years have had either no snow or only a trace reported on Thanksgiving morning.

That one exception was last year when 12 inches fell just a few days before Thanksgiving.  Otherwise, this century has been dominated by brown yards on this day.  Granted, many of these holiday weekends did not finish brown as on several occasions travel conditions deteriorated the following three days, but at least this day set aside to give thanks, most of us could add weather to the list of things to be thankful for.

Although the record high for tomorrow is 56 degrees, that year this date was not the holiday.  The warmest Thanksgiving Day occurred back in 1901 when the high was 55 degrees and we could come close to breaking that record tomorrow afternoon.

Thankful Weather

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Historically, about one-half of all years will have a weather event during the four day Thanksgiving weekend that makes travel difficult, but usually the bad weather does not occur on Thursday. Since 1950, it has snowed one inch or more only four times on Thanksgiving Day and on 47 of those 58 years (81%) no measurable precipitation fell, including 14 out of the last 15.

That one exception was back in 2003 when one-half inch of snow fell in Fargo Moorhead. The heaviest Thanksgiving Day snow was 7.8 inches that fell back in 1993. That was part of a stretch of seven straight days of snow that added up to over a foot with snow falling over the entire four day holiday weekend that year. So on this day of giving thanks, we can often give thanks for the weather and it appears today will be another in our streak of dry Thanksgiving days.

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Storm Perception

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With Thanksgiving coming up this week many of you will be paying close attention to the weather forecast. The common perception is that it there always seems to be a storm during the Thanksgiving weekend. There are probably two reasons for this. First, is length, as over the course of four or five days the odds of some precipitation falling is always relatively high and it does not take much precipitation to cause travel headaches.

The second may surprise you and deals with the timing of storms. In the 127 previous years of record keeping the days in November with the highest percentage of precipitation occurring have been on the 25th, 26th and 27th with snow falling on those days in nearly one year in three. The November daily average is for precipitation to fall on any given day in about one year in five. So the perception of storms around Thanksgiving does have some statistical confirmation to it.