A white Christmas in Seattle? Yeah, right...

Dreaming of a white Christmas?

Don't lose any sleep in Seattle at least.

The Emerald City has just an 8 percent chance of a white Christmas this year, says NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, home to one of the world's largest archives of weather data,

The center bases its predictions on data collected from 1988 to 2005.

The U.S. city with the best chance of seeing snow: Fairbanks, Alaska, where the chance of snow is pegged at 100 percent. Anchorage comes in at 90 percent.

Steer clear of Los Angeles or San Francisco, of course. Chances of a white Christmas in those cities is almost nonexistent, just 1 percent.

Outside of Alaska, the highest snow chance is Duluth, Minn., at 97 percent and Concord, N.H. at 87 percent.

Spokane has a Christmas snow probability of 70 percent.

And Portland? Don't bring out your sleds. The climatic center says it has just a 1 percent chance of snow at Christmas.

And last year in Seattle?

It's hard to forget the dump of snow that clogged streets and frustrated everyone but perhaps children. On Christmas Day, there was 4 inches of snow at Seattle-Tacoma International airport.

The prediction last year was a 7 to 8 percent chance of snow on Christmas, said meteorologist Johnny Burg with the National Weather Service in Seattle. That means that in a 100-year period, there might be 8 Christmases with snow. To be considered a white Christmas, there must be at least an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com