![Can you trust your memory of the snows of Christmas past?](/sites/default/files/Rutgers_XmasWeekSnow_2017_480.png)
Just for fun, we asked the experts at the Rutgers Snow Lab to show us what their data (based on NOAA satellite images) had to say about whether the number of snow-covered days during the week of Christmas has changed at all across the U.S. in the past 50 years.
![At end of spring 2014, Northern Hemisphere snow cover below average for tenth year in a row](/sites/default/files/SnowDurationAnomSpring_480.jpg)
April snow extent was record low across Europe and Asia, and in June, the entire Northern Hemisphere was below average for the tenth year in a row. Spring snow is disappearing even more rapidly than Arctic sea ice in summer.
![2014 Arctic Report Card: Visual Highlights](/sites/default/files/ARC2014-480x320.jpg)
The latest installment of NOAA's Arctic Report Card confirms that Arctic air temperatures are rising at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole. This collection of images highlights some of the key changes in physical and biological conditions in the Far North.
![Record Low Spring Snow Cover in Northern Hemisphere 2012](/sites/default/files/0%20Northern%20Hemisphere%20Snow%20Cover480.png)
In June 2012, snow cover extent over Eurasia and North America hit a new record low. It is the third time in five years that North America has set a new record low, and the fifth year in a row that Eurasia has. The rate of snow cover loss over Northern Hemisphere land areas in June between 1979 and 2012 is -17.6% per decade—a faster decline than September sea ice loss over the same period.
![State of the Climate: 2011 Snow Cover in Northern Hemisphere](/sites/default/files/2011_NHsnowanom_480.jpg)
In 2011, annual snow cover extent over Northern Hemisphere continents (including the Greenland ice sheet) averaged 24.7 million square kilometers, which is 0.3 million square kilometers less than the long-term average.
![Climate change: spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere](/sites/default/files/2021-07/ClimateDashboard-Northern-Hemisphere-snow-cover-graph-20210505-700px.jpg)
For the fifth year in a row, late spring snow cover was below average again in 2022.