(NEW YORK) — Ahead of Christmas, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released an interactive map that shows the average percent chance of seeing snow in towns across the country.
NOAA defines the meaning of a “white Christmas” if there is at least 1 inch of snow on the ground by 7 a.m. Christmas morning.
According to data collected by the NOAA over the course of 30 years, most large U.S. cities, from Boston to Chicago to Seattle, don’t typically have much of a chance of seeing a white Christmas on average.
Minneapolis-Saint Paul is the only large metropolitan area that has a likely chance this year, at 74%.
In the Northeast, Washington, D.C., normally has a 5% chance and New York City typically has a 13% chance of seeing a white Christmas on average.
Those out West have a bit more luck.
Aspen, Colorado, has almost a 100% chance of seeing a white Christmas and Breckenridge, Colorado, is not far behind with a 98% chance on average.
With the mild start to the winter season this year, the national snowfall average is behind across most of the U.S.
As of now, not much snow is expected east of the Rockies, where it is forecast to get warmer for most heading towards Christmas this year.
New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit and Denver are not expected to see a white Christmas this year.
However, most of the Rocky Mountains and all of the West Coast at higher elevations will see snow on the ground.
Similarly, in the Northeast, snow will be on the ground at higher elevations, especially from upstate New York to Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
The forecast this year calls for a white Christmas in most of North Dakota, the northern half of Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and most northern parts of Michigan, including the Upper Peninsula.
Commander, a purebred German Shepherd, was gifted to Biden by his brother James and his sister-in-law for his birthday, and will also be joined by the long-awaited Biden family cat in January.
Biden later tweeted a 15-second video showing him meeting the new arrival on the White House lawn.
“Hey, pal. How you doing? How are you?” Biden said to his enthusiastic new friend.
The video also features Biden throwing a ball to Commander on the lawn, walking into the White House holding the new puppy on a leash alongside first lady Jill Biden, and the president giving a treat to their new pet in front of a festive fireplace mantel.
As the Bidens welcomed Commander to the White House on Monday, they also announced that their other German Shepherd, Major, the first shelter dog to live in the White House, would be leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to live with family friends following a handful of biting incidents involving White House staff this year.
“After consulting with dog trainers, animal behaviorists and veterinarians, the First Family has decided to follow the experts’ collective recommendation that it would be safest for Major to live in a quieter environment with family friends,” the first lady’s press secretary Michael LaRosa said in a statement.
“This is not in reaction to any new or specific incident, but rather a decision reached after several months of deliberation as a family and discussions with experts,” he added.
The family’s other longtime German Shepherd, Champ, whom Biden said considered himself a member of the Secret Service, died in June at 13 years old.
The first lady teased in an April interview with NBC’s Today program that a female cat was “waiting in the wings.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will announce a plan on Tuesday to distribute 500 million free at-home rapid tests to Americans beginning in January as part of an attempt to double down on the spread of a transmissible variant that has hit the U.S. distressingly close to the holidays.
Biden’s new efforts come as the omicron variant became the most dominant COVID strain in the country Monday, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all cases, and just as travel kicks off at nearly pre-pandemic levels for the holiday season.
The free at-home rapid tests will be delivered by mail to Americans who request them, a senior administration official told reporters on Monday night in a preview of the speech, marking a slightly different approach from European countries that chose to send tests to all residents.
Americans will have to request the tests through a website that will launch in January, the official said, and its not yet clear how many tests Americans will be able to request per household.
The move is a significant departure from the White House’s posture just two weeks ago, when White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed the idea of mailing tests to every American as costly and wasteful.
“Should we just send one to every American?” Psaki told a reporter on Dec. 6.
“Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost, and then what happens after that?” Psaki said.
But the effort shows the consensus among White House officials on the need to improve the nation’s testing apparatus, which was caught unprepared by the perfect storm of high demand for pre-holiday testing and a surge of omicron cases.
As a result, Americans have faced long lines and empty shelves this week as they attempt to safely gather for the holidays in keeping with CDC guidance, which calls for families to use at-home rapid tests as an extra layer of prevention before gathering.
Dr. Sam Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation and a member of their Pandemic Prevention Institute, said the government could have seen this coming.
“Scientists have been warning about the potential for new variants to come along for a year now or more. And we’ve known about omicron since the day before Thanksgiving. It’s been weeks at this point,” he said.
There will be other actions to get ahead of omicron outlined in Biden’s speech on Tuesday, too, like new federal testing sites around the country — the first several of which will launch in New York City by Christmas — and mobilizing 1,000 military doctors and nurses to overburdened hospitals, the senior administration official said.
The military aid will be five-fold the current deployment and could be a big boost to hospitals that have been running on fumes for two years.
There are currently 175 troops spread over four states, and since August 2021, when a joint military operation across the Army, Navy and Air Force began, about 530 medical military personnel have been deployed to work alongside civilian health care providers.
This will be the second time Biden addresses the nation about the omicron variant in less than a month.
In November, Biden announced a winter COVID plan that included beefing up vaccination and booster clinics to encourage more Americans to get protected and increase testing by getting insurance companies to reimburse the cost of at-home tests.
The 500 million free at-home tests that will be announced on Tuesday will be in addition to getting at-home tests reimbursed, which will go into effect on Jan. 15.
Noticeably missing from the new government efforts will be any attempts to enact further restrictions or lockdowns — which some European countries have opted for as omicron has swept through their populations.
It will not be a speech about “locking the country down,” Psaki said at a press briefing on Monday afternoon.
“This is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the American people about the benefits of being vaccinated, the steps we’re going to take to increase access and to increase testing and the risks posed to unvaccinated individuals,” Psaki said.
Psaki also said Biden would deliver a “stark warning” for those that choose to remain unvaccinated.
“For those who choose to remain unvaccinated, he’ll issue a stark warning and make clear unvaccinated individuals will continue to drive hospitalizations and deaths,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — The recent rise in COVID-19 cases has come at an important time for millions of American families, particularly ones who avoided gatherings during last winter’s surge.
However, doctors and medical experts said this year’s holiday celebrations don’t necessarily need to be outright canceled if eligible family members are vaccinated and stick to protective protocols.
“I think it can be very different than last year,” Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said. “We didn’t have vaccines, we didn’t have pervasive testing. With these new tools, we can celebrate in a different way.”
Brownstein and other health experts said vaccinations and booster shots are the best tools to ensure that families are safe. The health data has shown that fully vaccinated people are less susceptible to the severe symptoms of the virus, are less likely to be hospitalized and less likely to die from COVID.
The booster shots have also been shown to provide strong protection from severe symptoms.
“The vast majority of breakthrough cases will be mild or asymptomatic,” he said.
Brownstein also emphasized social distancing before traveling to see families as it would reduce the risk of catching the virus from someone outside their household.
While there are long lines at testing sites and shortages of tests around the country, medical experts told ABC News that getting a test will give families peace of mind and prevent spread if they gather.
Dr. June McKoy, a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told ABC News that even fully vaccinated individuals should get a test and avoid gatherings if the test comes back positive.
McKoy emphasized that the virus is still dangerous for children under five, the elderly and those with immunocompromised systems.
“Families need to be open before they have visitors,” she told ABC News. “They need to know if you are putting someone at risk.”
McKoy recommended that indoor gatherings be kept to a small number, especially if it’s difficult to ventilate the room. She also urged family members to wear masks inside if there is an unvaccinated child or very elderly to ensure they are protected.
Removing the masks during meals is OK, according to McKoy, who said she plans on wearing a mask when she visits her family this week.
Ultimately, McKoy said it will come down to a person’s own sense of risk aversion and willingness to adhere to vaccinations and protective protocols.
She did note that holiday gatherings with family are important for one’s mental health and said taking such steps to enjoy the company of family during the holidays would be worth the sacrifice.
“We’ve all been waiting for [the holidays] and this is the important one. We all have to make sure to make it safe,” she said.
Anyone who needs help scheduling a free vaccine appointment can log onto vaccines.gov.
Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon have issued a statement addressing allegations against their co-star Chris Noth.
On Monday, the stars of the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That…, released the same statement on their respective Instagram Stories, expressing their support for the victims accusing Noth of sexual assault.
“We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations against Chris Noth,” the statement reads. “We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences. We know it must be a very difficult thing to do and we comment them for it.”
The statement comes after detailed stories from two women accusing the 67-year-old actor of sexual assault was published last week. The two women — one now 40, and another, now 31 — “approached The Hollywood Reporter separately” and claimed that the actor allegedly forced himself on them. The incidents allegedly took place, respectively, in Los Angeles in 2004 and in New York in 2015.
Since the allegations emerged, Peloton dropped its brand new advert starring Noth, and most recently, he was dropped from the CBS series The Equalizer.
CBS and Universal Television said in a statement on Monday, “Chris Noth will no longer film additional episodes of The Equalizer, effective immediately.”
The Law & Order star has denied the accusations, explaining in a statement, “The encounters were consensual. The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago, are categorically false.”
“These stories could’ve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago — no always means no — that is a line I did not cross,” he continued. “It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”
Think you’ve got it tough, trying to wrangle all your kids together for Christmas? Consider Rod Stewart, who has eight children by five different women. While he says he managed to get most of them together years ago, it’s just become way too complicated now that they’re adults.
“We did it once, I think about 20 years ago,” Rod tells ABC Audio. “There was my first wife, Alana, and then my second wife, Rachel, and my to-be third wife, Penny, and the mother of Ruby, my third daughter. So they were all there, cooking the turkey in their own particular way.”
But Rod says these days, spending Christmas together is pretty impossible.
“We’re in all different parts of the world now, you know,” he explains. “The kids all go home to their mums’ for Christmas Day. But hopefully we’re all going to get together in Florida for New Year’s Day and my birthday, which is the 10th of January.”
However, Rod admits that he doesn’t mind that gathering his brood is a logistical nightmare.
“I’m glad it’s difficult because they’ve all got their own careers you have to consider,” he notes. “It’s not like they’re little and they depend on me. They’ve got their own careers, their own relationships and I have to be, y’know, a different father to every one of them, such is the age group: It goes from 10 up to 57.”
Rod’s eldest child, Sarah, was given up for adoption when she was born, but the two now have a relationship. Alana Hamilton is the mother of Sean and Kimberly Stewart. Kelly Emberg is the mother of Ruby Stewart. Rachel Hunter is the mother of Liam and Renee Stewart, while Penny Lancaster is the mother of Aiden, 10, and Alastair, 16.
Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is back on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for a record third straight year. But Mariah says even now, after all its success, she’s not quite sure why the song, which she originally released in 1994, has become a bona fide Christmas classic.
In an interview she did to promote her latest Apple TV+ holiday special, Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues, Mariah admits, “I don’t know how to explain it. It was just the moment. At first, I doubted it, too. I was like, ‘Why would I do a Christmas song now? This is so early in my life and my career.’ But I’m so thankful that I did because it came out from a pure place.”
She continues, “I think one of the things that has given it the longevity that it has is that it doesn’t feel like one specific era, you know what I mean? Like, we did it so that it would feel like a modern classic.”
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” wasn’t eligible to enter the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994 because it wasn’t commercially available as a single. That rule changed, and now, every year since 2012, the song has returned to the chart; for the past three years, it’s reached number one.
“You know, Christmas songs, a lot of people do them now earlier in their careers,” Mariah notes. “But it does take a long time to sort of permeate the world’s…’Christmas radar.’ And you just gotta hold on and live with it. And if it’s a true hit that resonates with people, then that’s what it’s gonna be.”
She adds, “I don’t know the magic. There is no secret formula. It is just, like, what it is.”
Machine Gun Kelly capped off a banner year over the weekend with a sold-out show at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.
For the “Bloody Valentine” rocker, headlining the arena, which is where the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team plays, has long been a dream of his.
“Manifested sellin [sic] out the Cavs arena since I saw Jay-Z do it in 2008,” Kelly writes in an Instagram post reflecting on the concert. “It sold out in one day.”
“You are my gift,” Kelly adds of his Cleveland fans. “Thank you for the best homecoming ever, merry xxmas.”
The post also includes a number of photos and videos from the concert, which, according to Setlist.fm, spanned over 40 songs and featured renditions of nearly every Tickets to My Downfall song.
The show was a fitting end to MGK’s 2021, which saw him continue to enjoy the success of Tickets with the release of the Downfalls High film and a sold-out headlining tour. Kelly looks to continue that streak into 2022 with the expected release of his next album, Born with Horns.
When reflecting on Christmases past, a poignant memory comes to Miranda Lambert‘s mind.
Growing up in Lindale, Texas, Miranda’s parents were private investigators, but her father, Rick Lambert, also dabbled in music. She remembers a particularly challenging time for her family around the holiday season, with her family finding joy in a somber holiday song by Merle Haggard, ”If We Make It Through December,” that her dad would sing each year.
“I think my favorite Christmas song of all time is ‘If We Make it Through December’ because growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money a lot of the years at the holiday season and my dad, I could just see the look on his face when he would sing that song on his guitar, sitting on the porch every Christmas, trying to make it special for his family,” Miranda recalls. “But sometimes it’s a real struggle.”
The country superstar is now honoring that memory on the Pistol Annies‘ Christmas album, Hell of a Holiday, which features a cover of the plaintive number.
Knowing the challenges her family faced, Miranda views the song as a symbol of hope for those who struggle during the holidays.
“When I hear that song, it brings back those emotions of there’s families out there who really don’t have a way to do the whole Santa, Christmas morning,” she describes. “So that song just really speaks to that.”
After holding his annual .Paak House charity festival in Los Angeles for three years, Anderson .Paak is proud to move his December 22 event to his hometown, Oxnard, California.
“I want to give back more to the city that gave me my character,” the two-time Grammy winner tells the Ventura County Star.
“When I was growing up, I used to shoot out to LA whenever I could,” he adds. “As I get older, I’m more appreciative of where I’m from.”
The fourth annual .Paak House festival benefits his non-profit Brandon Anderson Foundation, which supports underserved youth through access to the arts, after-school programs and more.
The 35-year-old singer will perform with his group The Free Nationals, and he will also present special surprise entertainment. He’s keeping the entertainment a secret, although he says attendees could expect artists like Jhené Aiko and Lucky Daye.
Anthony Anderson, Ty Dolla $ign, Snoh Aalegra, Raphael Saadiq, Goapele, The Game, Schoolboy Q, Cordae and Thundercat are among the celebrities who have appeared in the past.
2021 has been a big year for Anderson. “Leave the Door Open,” the debut single by Silk Sonic, his duo with Bruno Mars, is up for four Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance.
The smash hit also won an American Music Award for Favorite R&B Song, and Soul Train Awards for Song of the Year and Video of the Year.
In person tickets for .Paak House are sold out; however, tickets are available to watch the livestream, which begins this Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, at MomentHouse.com/paakhouse.
