The Brief<\/p>\n
A weak, early winter La Ni\u00f1a will lead to milder temperatures this winter as it influences the storm track.<\/p>\n
Conditions are expected to change later in the winter when La Ni\u00f1a loses its influence and leads to more potential for snow.<\/p>\n
The FOX 29 Weather Authority is predicting below-average snowfall for yet another Philadelphia winter.<\/p>\n
PHILADELPHIA – It won\u2019t be long now until residents across the Delaware Valley are digging out their winter gear as the holiday season approaches.<\/p>\n
What will winter be like in the northeast? Will we have a white Christmas? How much snow will we get?<\/p>\n
Our FOX 29 Weather Authority is doing their best to answer all that and more in their 2025-2026 Winter Outlook!<\/p>\n
Winter weather patterns. La Ni\u00f1a <\/p>\n
What we know<\/p>\n
This winter will begin with a weak La Ni\u00f1a, which means colder than average water in the eastern Pacific \u2014 off the coast of Peru \u2014 will influence the jet stream and storm track over the U.S.<\/p>\n
An even broader ocean influence, called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), is negative, which indicates a milder winter is on the way.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
For the last few winters, we just haven\u2019t held the cold in the Philadelphia area. We experience some cold stretches, but they don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
January should be our coldest month of the winter season.<\/p>\n
Conditions are expected to change later in the winter, when La Ni\u00f1a 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.<\/p>\n
Snowfall predictions<\/p>\n
By the numbers<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
The number you\u2019ve all been waiting for is \u2026 16. The FOX 29 Weather Authority is calling for 16 inches of snow this year in the Philadelphia area.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s double the eight inches that fell last year, but still well under our average of 22 inches.<\/p>\n
How we got here<\/p>\n
Dig deeper<\/p>\n
So how did the Weather Authority come to that number? By examining some of the unique weather Philadelphia has had this year.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We also had a really warm summer and one of the warmest Octobers. Years with those conditions also saw below average snow.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also been dry lately as we\u2019ve gone through one of the driest August-October stretches on record.<\/p>\n
After averaging out the winters of years that saw similar weather to what we\u2019ve seen in 2025, we ended up with 16 inches.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief A weak, early winter La Ni\u00f1a will lead to milder temperatures this winter as it influences…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12716,12720,12718,69,71,70,12719,12717],"class_list":["post-17914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-fox-29-weather-authority","tag-jet-stream","tag-la-nina","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-storm-track","tag-weather-authority"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}