"So you're telling me there's a chance." — Lloyd Christmas, "Dumb and Dumber"



"So you're telling me there's a chance."

— Lloyd Christmas, "Dumb and Dumber"

PROVIDENCE — Forecasters are telling us there's a chance — a chance of a white Christmas, that is.

"The chances aren't zero," Bryce Williams, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Norton, Massachusetts, said. "There is the potential for us to get a dusting of snow" or a little more.

Tom Kines, a meteorologist for AccuWeather, had a similar forecast, although he sounded less optimistic.

"If you're looking for a white Christmas, there's still some hope — just not a lot," Kines said.

If snow does arrive, it will be the second Christmas in a row with snow for the Providence area, an unusual occurrence around here. Last year's snowfall wasn't exactly memorable, but the white stuff did fall. On Christmas Eve, a trace of snow was recorded in Providence, while on Christmas Day 0.2 inches fell.

Before last year, Southern New England had seven-straight snow-free Christmases. The white Christmas in 2009, when Providence had 5 inches on the ground, was the first since at least 2000. National Weather Service records also show no snow on Dec. 25 between 2001 and 2008. (Data is missing for the year 1996 and the years 1998 to 2000.) That’s just one white Christmas between 2001 and 2015.

To qualify as a white Christmas by the National Weather Service’s standards, there must be a measurable amount of snow on the ground.

White Christmases were more common in the middle of the last century. In the 1940s, the Providence area was a virtual Yuletide snow globe, with seven white Christmases, including 9 inches on the ground in 1942, 7 inches in 1944, 18 inches in 1945, 12 inches in 1947 and 5 inches in 1948.

Speaking on Monday afternoon, Williams said it's difficult to forecast what kind of weather the region will see seven or eight days into the future. Forecasters are eyeing a storm that's likely to bring rain Thursday and Friday. That storm will have an impact on what happens with the potential system behind it, Williams said.

Still, "the chances (of snow) are north of zero, because we do see some indication in at least a couple of the models that there is the potential for a system to clip us near the beginning of next week," he said.

And while the temperature is likely to reach 58 in Providence on Friday and 52 on Saturday, it will turn cooler after that, potentially cool enough for snow, according to Williams.

Kines, of AccuWeather, says the system that could move through Monday is a weak system, without a lot of moisture.

"It could drop some snow," he said. "If it did, it would not be a big storm. ... It's not out of the question that we could get a covering of snow."

If kids in Southern New England do wake up to snow on Christmas morning, they'll be among the lucky few, according to Kines.

"At this point," Kines said, "it does not look like a large portion of the country is going to have a white Christmas, which is not good news for Santa. He's going to have to think out of the box."