Kathryn and Morgan Heaney with their Christmas tree in Kelowna in 2021.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

While temperatures are likely to drop to freezing or slightly below for Christmas Day in Kamloops and the Okanagan, the chance of there being any snow is very low.

And this is not simply a local phenomenon.

“Southern British Columbia and southern parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan are green or brown,” Environment Canada meteorologist Alyssa Charbonneau told iNFOnews.ca. “For parts of the Interior of BC it (green Christmas) does happen but it is unusual in terms of the Prairies.”

That being said, the Prairies have had “brown” Christmases in five of the last 20 years, she said.

The warm dry weather also extends as far north as Prince George and Smithers and into the Kootenays, at least as a far as Nelson.

“It is widespread and it does look unlikely for us to see any snow in the next few days for the southern parts of Western Canada that would transform us into a White Christmas,” Charbonneau said, noting that meteorologists consider 2 cm on the ground necessary to qualify for that title.

The Environment Canada online forecast for Kamloops and the Okanagan is for highs of 5 Celsius today, Dec. 22 with a 60% chance of showers later in the day.

The temperatures throughout the region are expected to drop to -3 C overnight tonight with highs of 0 C tomorrow. Christmas Day is forecast to be 0 C in Kamloops and -2 C in the Okanagan.

Kamloops should see a mix of sun and cloud on Christmas Day with a 40% chance of flurries starting that night.

The Okanagan could have sunny skies on Christmas Day but there is a 60% chance of snow that night. With highs slightly above freezing for the following days, any snow on the ground may just melt.

Prince George, which is known for getting a lot of snow, recorded a temperature of 7 C this morning and the online forecast indicates no snow on the ground.

Calgary is expecting a high of 10 C today.

While temperatures are going to drop in those areas of the country, snow is not in the forecast.

This has been an unusually warm and dry fall in much of Western Canada which cannot be blamed on the El Nino weather pattern. That is just now starting to have an influence, Charbonneau said.

“El Nino has been found to have an impact in the winter weather,” she said.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, marking the first day of winter as the days start getting longer through to the Summer Solstice in June.

The fact that El Nino may be contributing to an unusually widespread green and brown Christmas does not mean the rest of the winter will be the same.

“Even a strong El Nino does not necessarily mean it will be warmer temperatures (throughout the winter),” Charbonneau said. “It just means it’s more likely for us to see some impacts.

“The other thing about El Nino, and this is the tricky part, is it really can play out in a lot of different ways. So, it’s not necessarily guaranteed that it’s going to lead to warmer than normal temperatures, although that is more likely.”

Even more unpredictable is El Nino’s impact on precipitation.

What is more likely though is that, with warmer than average temperatures this winter, what precipitation does fall in valley bottoms is more likely to be rain than snow.

El Nino can also trigger an earlier snowmelt in the spring, Charbonneau said.

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