A cold Christmas is a good bet in the Rock Hill region. A white Christmas? Not so much.

If you’re looking for a Currier & Ives Christmas, with snow and cold, you’ll probably be disappointed.

But there is likely to be cold air.

Meteorologists say a dip in the jet stream will allow a surge of cold air to sweep into the Carolinas late Christmas Eve, setting the stage for what could be the coldest Dec. 25 in two decades.

Just how cold?

National Weather Service meteorologist Trisha Palmer says the official forecast calls for highs on Christmas Day in the low 40s around the Rock Hill-Charlotte region, but she adds she “wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see forecasts trending colder in the next few days.”

Palmer says much of the most recent computer guidance shows temperatures remaining in the 30s on Friday.

It will be a typical case of cold air chasing precipitation in the Carolinas. A cold front is forecast to move across the region on Christmas Eve, bringing numerous showers in the afternoon and evening. But Palmer says it looks as if the precipitation will have moved east of the Rock Hill region by the time really cold air arrives early Christmas Day.

She says it will be a different story in the higher mountain elevations, where it is likely to get cold enough late Thursday night for rain to change to snow.

Christmas has been mild in recent years across the Rock Hill region. The average high on Dec. 25 is 50 degrees, but Christmas highs have been above that all but once since 2014.

If Friday’s highs indeed stay in the 30s, it would be the coldest Christmas Day since 2000, when the high was 35. The Christmas Day high in 2013 was 39 degrees.

More typical in recent years was the 2019 reading of 61 degrees, or the highs of 68 in 2016 and 74 in 2015.

This story was originally published December 20, 2022 at 8:43 AM.