There’s No Winter Wonderland for Philly

Remember this?

It’s already too late for a White Christmas. Now the question is: Will we have a White Winter — at all?

We’re off to a bad start, NBC10 meteorologist Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz writes at that station’s website today. “Philadelphia has never gone this far into winter without even a flake of snow (in our recorded history),” he writes. “Even in the ‘snowless’ winter of 1972-73, we had traces of snow before this date.”

Part of the reason? This is an El Niño year — the El Niño of 1997-98 ended up producing less than an inch of snow in Philly that winter.

It might be tough to get any snowflakes this winter, Schwartz suggests.

“Canada has seen temperatures WAAAY above average, so even air coming from Canada isn’t as cold as it normally would be,” he writes. “And the lack of snow around the Great Lakes and Midwest weakens any surge of arctic air that comes this way. That area needs to fill up with snow before our snow chances go up.”