Other Vicksburg, Warren County to see snow

Downtown Vicksburg and the Warren County Courthouse will be covered in snow for Christmas — just not here.

With a Christmas Day forecast calling for sunny skies and a high of 62, locals looking to get a glimpse of a white Christmas would have to travel to one of our colder, northern counterparts.

The Village of Vicksburg, Mich. — about 900 miles north of our city — will be the only Vicksburg likely to see a white Christmas this year, and Warren County, Ind., — some 700 miles north of here — should become a Winter Wonderland this week, according to predictions from the National Weather Service.

Calls to the National Weather Service office in Jackson to find the closest chance of snow bounced around from forecaster to forecaster for a few minutes, leaving the meteorologists scratching their heads.

“You know, I usually wonder that too,” said one forecaster, who put the caller on hold before another equally befuddled forecaster answered. Eventually, senior meteorologist Eric Carpenter picked up the phone.

“I would really target the northern Indiana area up into Michigan,” said Carpenter.

Carpenter’s prediction came after about half an hour of research. Snow questions aren’t very common for southern meteorologists, and tracking the closest snow can be difficult for an agency that is more concerned about southern twisters than blizzards.

Unlike its southern counterpart, Vicksburg, Mich., typically has a white Christmas, said Village Clerk Tracy Locey.

“I think the Christmas lights look a lot nicer when they’ve got a little snow reflecting on them,” she said.

Snow is vital to traditional holiday pastimes for the approximately 2,900 residents of the village, which like our Vicksburg is about a 45-minute drive from its state’s Jackson.

“Over Christmas break the kids like to go tobogganing and snow tubing, skiing and snowboarding,” Locey said. “It’s not in the village, but you can be skiing in 20 minutes.”

Vicksburg, Mich., is in the southern part of Kalamazoo County, about an hour’s drive north of South Bend, Ind., home of Notre Dame University.

Warren County, Ind. — home to about 8,500 people and one of Indiana’s least populated counties — is well south of Vicksburg, Mich., and on the southern tip of a strong possibility for a Christmas snowstorm.

“They are calling for a pretty good chance of snow the day before Christmas,” said Kevin Strickler, the water and street superintendent for the City of Williamsport, Ind.

The town of fewer than 2,000 people is the county seat of the rural farming county on the border of Indiana and Illinois.

“We don’t even have a stop light in the county,” Strickler said.

Snow on Christmas is rare in Williamsport, said Strickler, who is a lifelong resident of the city. But Christmas celebrations in the rural county are much like in the South, he said.

“I think it’s more of what Christmas really is, not commercialized. It’s all about Jesus. That’s how it feels to me,” he said.