Grand Strand in for a white (fog) Christmas

The Grand Strand may be in for a white Christmas. No. Not Snow.

But meteorologists are forecasting a white fog to envelop the area through Christmas Eve and into Christmas morning – dashing chances of spotting Santa in flight.

And like the house guest who just won’t leave, forecasts show this unseasonably warm December isn’t going anywhere.

December has been unseasonably warm in the Grand Strand where the high of 75 on Christmas Eve tied a record set at the Grand Strand Airport in North Myrtle Beach in 1955, according to the National Weather Service in Wilmington, N.C.

“I thought we would have broken it, but it doesn’t appear so,” said Stephen Keebler, a meteorologist at the Wilmington office. “Maybe next time.”

The coastal area wasn’t predicted to beat the record high for Christmas set at 77 in 1955 at the same airport. A high of 77 is predicted for Christmas on the Grand Strand this year.

“It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be close again tomorrow,” Keebler said.

All bets are off for a white Christmas – in the snow sense – for most of the eastern United States, where record-breaking highs in the 70s greeted New Yorkers and Bostonians with a warm hug Christmas Eve.

A band of moisture and thunderstorms was moving through northeast Georgia, the Upstate and western North Carolina mountains towards Washington, DC, Christmas Eve. But the radar looked clear for the Grand Strand and Pee Dee.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going to have any widespread or significant rainfall” over the next few days, DiGiorgi said, but the weather may appear “kind of gloomy” as “quite a bit of fog” rolls in.

“We expect the fog to intensify,” DiGiorgi said, with the worst of it moving in overnight Christmas Eve and extending into Christmas morning.

The unseasonably warm December temperatures and moisture are byproducts of an El Niño winter and a Bermuda High stirred up by the Pacific-influenced weather pattern.

Sitting just off the East Coast, the Bermuda High is “something we would normally talk about in the summer months,” DiGiorgi said. But El Niño is revered for changing things up in weather systems.

“This is really what’s been driving the weather since the fall when we had all that rain,” DiGiorgi said. “El Niño winters in this part of the country tend to be very wet.”

The warm temperatures are expected to continue through New Years Eve when the high may drop to a more normal temperature in the 60s, he said.

This story was originally published December 24, 2015 at 1:55 PM with the headline "Grand Strand in for a white (fog) Christmas."