Chances of Snow on New Year's Day for USA Cities

New Year's Day is often snowy for much of the northeastern United States and the western mountains. Large American cities that are more likely than not to have some snow on January 1 include Buffalo, Rochester, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

The major metro area scoring the best chance of a white New Year's is Minnesota's Minneapolis — St Paul, with its 77 percent probability of having at least an inch of snow on the ground. In fact there's likely to be three inches or more lying around.

Even so, several cities have a higher chance than Minneapolis of shovelling fresh snow on Jan 1. The odds are 30 percent or better that some snow lands on that date in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and near fifty-fifty in Rochester and Buffalo.

The table below gives the probabilties of snow on New Year's Day for 51 US cities.

Other cities with a good likelihood of enjoying a snowy Jan 1st include Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. They all have over a 40 percent chance of seeing an inch of snow around that day.

More potentially snowy cities then are Pittsburgh and Denver, which have better than one in three odds of snow. For St. Louis, Cincinnati and Providence the odds run about one in five.

Overall, any city where it can snow, is more likely to see the white stuff at New Year's than to have a white Christmas.

Probability (%) of having Snow on the Ground of at least 1 inch deep or Snowfall of at least 0.1 inches on January 1.

City	Snow on Ground	Snowfall
Atlanta, Georgia	2	2
Austin, Texas	0	0
Baltimore, Maryland	8	6
Birmingham, Alabama	0	1
Boston, Massachusetts	–	17
Buffalo, New York	58	46
Charlotte, North Carolina	2	2
Chicago, Illinois	41	25
Cincinnati, Ohio	21	19
Cleveland, Ohio	45	35
Columbus, Ohio	27	24
Dallas, Texas	0	1
Denver, Colorado	34	15
Detroit, Michigan	41	30
Hartford, Connecticut	–	17
Houston, Texas	0	0
Indianapolis, Indiana	30	20

Percent chance of snow on New Year's Day.

City	Snow on Ground	Snowfall
Jacksonville, Florida	0	0
Kansas City, Missouri	22	12
Las Vegas, Nevada	0	0
Los Angeles, California	0	0
Louisville, Kentucky	12	10
Memphis, Tennessee	2	2
Miami, Florida	0	0
Milwaukee, Wisconsin	50	28
Minneapolis, Minnesota	77	29
Nashville, Tennessee	2	4
New Orleans, Louisiana	0	0
New York, New York	16	9
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma	5	4
Orlando, Florida	0	0
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	11	9
Phoenix, Arizona	0	0
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	35	32

Chances of a white New Year (percent)

City	Snow on Ground	Snowfall
Portland, Oregon	4	3
Providence, Rhode Island	20	15
Raleigh, North Carolina	3	2
Richmond, Virginia	7	4
Riverside, California	0	0
Rochester, New York	56	50
Sacramento, California	–	0
Salt Lake City, Utah	51	25
San Antonio, Texas	0	0
San Diego, California	0	0
San Francisco, California	0	0
San Jose, California	0	0
Seattle, Washington	3	4
St. Louis, Missouri	20	12
Tampa, Florida	0	0
Virginia Beach, Virginia	–	3
Washington, DC	6	6

About the Data

The snow probabilities were calculated by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center based on weather data collected from 1991 to 2020.

These major cities represent the 51 metropolitan areas in the United States with the most people, all those with over one million residents in 2010, according to the US Census Bureau. A complete list of America's largest urban centers is available here.