PHILADELPHIA – It won’t be long now until residents across the Delaware Valley are digging out their winter gear as the holiday season approaches.
What will winter be like in the northeast? Will we have a white Christmas? How much snow will we get?
Our FOX 29 Weather Authority is doing their best to answer all that and more in their 2025-2026 Winter Outlook!
Winter weather patterns. La Niña
What we know:
This winter will begin with a weak La Niña, which means colder than average water in the eastern Pacific — off the coast of Peru — will influence the jet stream and storm track over the U.S.
An even broader ocean influence, called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), is negative, which indicates a milder winter is on the way.
This will all result in a more active jet stream over the Great Lakes and the Northeast, bringing more clipper systems and more snow potential there.
For the last few winters, we just haven’t held the cold in the Philadelphia area. We experience some cold stretches, but they don’t stick around for long. Often times in those cases, the jet stream, and storm track, have been well to our south, resulting in more dry days for our area.
Skiers can look forward to more snow in the mountains, while cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., will see less snow and more of a wintry mix.
January should be our coldest month of the winter season.
Conditions are expected to change later in the winter, when La Niña loses its influence and leaves us with the potential for more snow as we end up with a greater chance of the jet stream ending up over our area.
Snowfall predictions
By the numbers:
The FOX 29 Weather Authority says there is a 15% chance of a white Christmas this year. The odds of a white Christmas in our area are historically not in our favor.
We’re also estimating a total of 17 days with snow on the ground this winter. Expect about four smaller snowfall days and three bigger storms with plowable snow.
The number you’ve all been waiting for is … 16. The FOX 29 Weather Authority is calling for 16 inches of snow this year in the Philadelphia area.
That’s double the eight inches that fell last year, but still well under our average of 22 inches.
How we got here
Dig deeper:
So how did the Weather Authority come to that number? By examining some of the unique weather Philadelphia has had this year.
In August, we had a lot of days with low humidity, in a year that was one of the most humid on record. Looking back at other winters where humidity was low in August, snowfall totals came in below average.
We also had a really warm summer and one of the warmest Octobers. Years with those conditions also saw below average snow.
It’s also been dry lately as we’ve gone through one of the driest August-October stretches on record.
After averaging out the winters of years that saw similar weather to what we’ve seen in 2025, we ended up with 16 inches.
The other thing we looked at were weather trends in Philly. For the last six years, our snowfall has been much below the average of 22 inches. There’s a saying in meteorology: “the trend is your friend”.