Could Myrtle Beach, SC get a white Christmas in 2022? It happened once before.

Could Myrtle Beach get a white Christmas this year?

Christmas snow, to most Myrtle Beach area locals, is the stuff of holiday movies. In fact, many northerners, fondly nicknamed “snowbirds,” migrate to the Grand Strand every winter to escape the deep freeze of their home climes. But for those living in the area 33 years ago, 1989 was a Christmas they will never forget.

Horry locals struggled to recover from Hurricane Hugo that year when the entire area was plunged into a deep freeze in late December.

On Dec. 22, The Sun News reported frigid temperatures. Still, it said, “anyone hoping for a white Christmas will probably be disappointed,” citing a regional climatologist who expected warmer temperatures to prevail by the holiday.

Then, that very evening, the snow began to fall - and fall - and fall.

From the evening of Dec. 22 through Dec. 24, the entire area was covered with almost 15 inches of the white stuff. Loris recorded 14.5 inches of snow, Murrells Inlet had 11 inches and the sands of Myrtle Beach were covered in 14 inches of the winter precipitation that would last well through the holiday as temperatures plummeted into the low teens - even single digits inland.

According to the National Weather Service, it was the largest snowstorm in history for the South East coast.

It was a true winter wonderland for area locals. In rural fields, youths hitched homemade sleds, of trash-can lids and old car hoods, to 4-wheelers and slung their buddies across the frozen tundra.

Cars did playful donuts in mall parking lots.

On Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, The Sun News interviewed tourists who used the snow skis they’d brought for a planned trip to the mountains to ski down Ocean Boulevard.

The paper featured a picture of a 27-foot snow sculpture of an elf in Murrells Inlet.

But, according to those same articles, the arctic temperatures, snow, and ice created myriad problems for which The Grand Strand wasn’t prepared. The headlines from that week read: ‘Outages Bring Cold Home,’ ‘Snowstorm puts the breaks on shopping on Grand Strand,’ ‘Frozen water pipes put damper on holiday for some in Horry,’ and ‘Storm brings too much snow.’

Those stories describe people stranded during the holiday as the airport was closed, widespread power outages, and municipal workers missing Christmas with their families as they helped to treat frozen roads and dig stranded motorists from snow drifts.

How rare is snow in the Grand Strand area?

According to Ed Piotrowski, Chief Meteorologist at WPDE ABC15, “It’s so hard to get it to snow around here that 99 out of 100 times it’s a miss.”

He says the reason the Myrtle Beach area so rarely gets snow is that the area must first have days of below-freezing temperatures combined with a low-pressure system perfectly situated just off the South East coast to draw in enough moisture for snow to fall.

But, “more often than not,” he says, that low pressure develops too close to our coast and draws in the warmer moisture that results in sleet or rain.

Tim Armstrong, meteorologist and climate program leader for The National Weather Service Wilmington, said “Although cold air occurs every winter, climate data from the North Myrtle Beach airport shows an average of only 30 nights a year with freezing temperatures recorded.”

Additionally, our area typically only averages one or two days a year when temperatures fail to climb above freezing and those most often occur in January and February, according to records.

Armstrong agrees the odds of snow are rarely in our favor in Myrtle Beach, “the long-term annual average snowfall is only 0.9 inches per year, however, most years have no measurable snow at all,” he reports.

However, last year the Myrtle Beach area got its first measurable snowfall since 2014 on Jan. 29, 2022 with an inch falling in Conway. The National Weather Service records that event here.

What are our chances of a white Christmas this year?

The National Weather Center and Piotrowski are not predicting a snow event for the holiday this year.

Those perfect snowstorm conditions that we had in 1989 are just not expected to line up.

Both forecasts agree we will likely have rain on Thursday followed by plummeting temperatures and gusting winds on Friday, with cold arctic air settling into the area over the holiday weekend.

Christmas Day is expected to be mostly sunny with a high around 39F.

But as 1989 proved, forecasters don’t know everything.

This story was originally published December 20, 2022 at 7:00 AM.