Is a White Easter more likely than a White Christmas where you live? (snowfalls, records)

[The East Frisian]

Well, many people here say that a white Easter is more likely than a white X-mas and even myself have seen many days in March/April where there was a snowcover on the ground, while i have only seen three white christmas occasions in my life. (2001, was only a thin cover on the morning of Christmas eve which later turned to rain, in 2009 and in 2010).

I wanted to see if the word of mouth is actually true, so i checked all the available snow data from Bremerhaven (records start in 1949) and checked if a snow cover was reported on a) Christmas eve and/or Christmas day and b) Easter Sunday and/or Easter Monday.
For this i created a simple Excel Spreadsheet using numbers (1 = Occurrence, 0 = No occurence)

The definition by the DWD is that a day is counted as a day with a snow cover when there is a closed layer of snow of at least 1 cm on the ground by 6 o' clock UTC (so 7 AM CET respectively 8 AM daylight saving time). If it a snow cover appears later on that day, it does not count as a day with a snow cover- so regarding this fact the data might be obscured.

In those past 66 years i found in total 11 occurrences of a white christmas in Bremerhaven.
Of these 11 occurences, 10 occured on both christmas days and only in 2001 a snow cover was reported just on christmas eve.

Those years were: 1962, 1963, 1964, 1969, 1970, 1976, 1981, 1986, 2001, 2009 and 2010.
As we can see white christmases were actually very common in the colder decade of the 60s, while in the 50s and the 90s we didn't saw any white christmasses at all.


Now lets check the appearances of a White Easter.
Here i found only two! occurences in the past 66 years and both were only on a single Easter day.
The first one was on March 30th 1964 (Easter Monday) and the second one was on April 14th 2001 (Easter Sunday) and i do remember this latter event still very well.

So we can say, even though both events are quite rare here, a white christmas is still much more likely here than a seeing a White Easter.

Are there some regions in the World, where a White Easter might be still more likely than a White Christmas (apart from the Southern Hemisphere actually )?

[MeteoFlan]

According to popular hearsay yes, according to my personal records no. At least not in the last ten years I've been doing weather records.

[B87]

I've seen a white Easter once, a freak occurrence in 2008. I've never seen a white Xmas.

[Ethereal]

If only the seasons were reversed in the southern hemisphere...

Because, in the Blue Mountains (near Sydney) it has strangely more snowed in October than June (that's mid-spring). Somebody should really explain this...(Cambium?)

Blue Mountains snowfalls: why it’s snowing in October rather than July

So if we were in the northern hemisphere, the Blue Mountains would be getting more snow in Easter (April) than Christmas (December).

[cloudcrash619]

There's been a handful of White Christmases in the past but no White Easter. 1991 came close with an inch of snow the day before, but snow depth on Easter was zero. Though I would say that big snows are more likely in the first 2/3rds of March than anytime in December.

[Hemlock140]

Probably not. We have never had a white Christmas in 21 years here, but one year we did have a brief flurry, then the sun came out. We have had a lot of snow the week after Christmas though. It's only snowed in April once in that time, the day I broke my hand and had to drive to the hospital one-handed.
In the mountains nearby, we had snow in the last couple of days but here it's been rain.

[jgtheone]

We've had snow on Christmas but not on Easter. Figure that one out lol.

It snowed on the Alps and in the outer eastern suburbs at 600m elevation. My area has also had hail twice on Christmas, one time was the same time that it snowed and another was part of a super cell thunderstorm.

[Joe90]

In this part of the southern hemisphere, I would say mid spring snow is more common. than winter solstice snow. That's because low pressure systems from the sub polar region don't reach their peak until late winter/early spring, and can often still be at maximum frequency by mid spring. I worked in NZ ski areas for a number of years, and having the snowiest period after the season had ended, was reasonably common.

Summer seasonal lag, means the winter solstice can still have a high frequency of either high pressure, or subtropical lows -not good for snow lovers.

[Patrolman]

Neither. I ususally barbeque my turkey at the beach on Christmas Day and this Easter Sunday will barbeque my ham.

[Onefair]

Well we had snow here a few days ago. I would think christmas is still more likely!