Snow on Thanksgiving: How Often It Actually Snows, by City

Only eight of the 50 big cities we checked see measurable snow fall on Thanksgiving even one year in ten. Anchorage tops the list at roughly 30% — no surprise for a subarctic city where the snowpack is usually down by mid-November. Behind it come Fargo (19%) and a tight cluster of Great Lakes snowbelt cities: Cleveland (17%) and Pittsburgh (16%), both fed by cold air crossing the still-open, still-warm Great Lakes.

Here is the part that surprises people. The next two cities are not in the snow-belt at all — they are in the high-desert West. Denver and Salt Lake City both hit about 15%, out-snowing Chicago (8%) and Minneapolis (7%). Elevation does the work: Denver sits a mile high and Salt Lake at 4,200 feet, so a late-November system that would fall as cold rain in the Midwest arrives as snow on the Front Range and Wasatch. It is the same reason Albuquerque, at 5,300 feet, has managed a snowy Thanksgiving (5%) while Dallas and Oklahoma City, warmer and lower, essentially never do.

The reason the odds run lower than gut instinct almost everywhere is timing. Thanksgiving floats between November 22 and 28, three to four weeks before the depth of winter. In that window most of the country is cold enough for snow only intermittently, so even reliably white cities miss the holiday more often than they catch it. Chicago has had measurable Thanksgiving snow just twice since 1996; its last was 2007.

In 24 of the 50 cities, measurable snow has never once fallen on the actual Thanksgiving date in our 1970–2025 record. That list runs deep into places you might expect an occasional flake. Philadelphia has come closest — a trace on Thanksgiving 1989 — but never a measurable amount. Kansas City and Seattle are both blanks, and so is the entire Sunbelt: Dallas (one lonely 0.9-inch surprise in 1993), Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, and everything south of them.

A few big Northeast metros sit in a strange middle ground — capable of a genuinely snowy Thanksgiving, but almost never getting one. New York City's biggest was a 4.4-inch dump in 1989; it has not had measurable snow on the day since 1996. Boston's record is the same 1989 storm (4.4 inches), and its last snowy Thanksgiving was 2014. When the Northeast does catch one, it tends to be memorable precisely because it is so rare.

The coldest Thanksgiving in our big-city data belongs to Fargo, which fell to 24 below zero in 1985. Anchorage hit 14 below in 1994, and even Denver bottomed out at 5 below in 1993. At the warm end, the holiday can feel nothing like autumn: Los Angeles and San Diego both reached 94°F on Thanksgiving 2017, and Phoenix hit 90°F the same year. In the East, St. Louis once spent Thanksgiving 1973 at 74°F.

The single biggest Thanksgiving snowfall on the exact date went to Fargo, buried under 7.8 inches in 1993, with Cleveland's 7.0 inches in 2014 close behind. The most surprising entry is St. Louis, which is almost never white for the holiday (3% odds) yet took a 5.7-inch hit in 1980 — proof that in the transition zone, a rare snowy Thanksgiving can be a big one.