By: Bill Kinsland
Snow at Sautee Weather Station 2020
(Sautee)- As we fast approach Christmas, everyone wants to know if White County will have a “White Christmas”.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Patricia Atwell at the Peachtree City office says, “The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting near normal to colder than normal temperatures over the next 2 weeks, with near-normal precipitation. While this may get some hopes up, it looks like a dry pattern will set up across the area from December 23rd through Christmas with a system moving through late next week.”
She said, “All indications are that we will be too warm for snow, and she said, I expect if we were able to get some in higher elevations it would likely melt by Christmas.”
“White Christmases” are indeed rare here. Looking back through 78 years of local weather records, only three were found. The first was a 7-inch snowfall for Christmas, 1947 recorded by Cleveland Observer Mary Lou Sutton.
The next was Christmas 2010 when Dean Dyer at WRWH Radio in Cleveland recorded 2.0 inches and Bill Kinsland at Sautee recorded 2.3 inches. In 2020, a 1-inch snowfall was recorded by Helen Police Department and also at Sautee Weather Station.
December snow in White County is infrequent but it does happen. In fact, our biggest December snowfall event in the 78 years of record-keeping occurred fairly recently on December 9th, 2017. At WRWH Radio Station in Cleveland, 4.2 inches were recorded. Observers at Helen Police Department recorded 3.5 inches. At Sautee Weather Station, 5.5 inches fell.
Again the following year on December 9th, Cleveland got 1 inch of snow. Helen had 1.5 inch and Sautee recorded 1 inch.
An exhaustive study of all White County weather records for December all the way back to 1943 disclosed 25 December snow or ice events at the three sites.
Although no systematic weather records exist for White County prior to 1943, old newspaper reports from neighboring communities reveal larger events that undoubtedly affected White County.
Dahlonega Public Square during the Great December Snowstorm of 1886.
The heaviest snowstorm known to hit northern Georgia occurred December 3, 1886, and lasted through December 6th. Reporting in the Dahlonega Signal newspaper the following week, editor J.W. Woodward wrote that Dahlonega recorded a total of 24 inches of accumulated snow on the ground.
Going further back, Auraria newspaper editor Allen G. Fambrough in Lumpkin County wrote in the Western Herald that on December 21, 1833
6 inches of snow fell and covered everything.
