According to 9NEWS Meteorologist Ashton Altieri, the official definition of at least 1 inch of snow on the ground to classify Christmas as being white was written by the National Weather Service.

Denver officially had 5 inches of snow on the ground on Sunday morning, but many metro neighborhoods have even more.

It doesn't snow on Christmas Day very often, only 13 percent of the time in Denver's recorded climate history, so by those standards our white Christmas odds are poor indeed.

But since 1 inch of snow on the ground can qualify as a white Christmas, we've had those conditions 37 percent of the time since weather records began being kept in 1872.

The Christmas with the most snowfall was in 2007 with 7.8 inches. The Christmas with the most snow on the ground was after the Christmas Eve blizzard of 1982. Christmas Day that year had 24 inches.

Here are the recorded snow depths in Denver over the last 10 years:

2010: 0"
2009: 3"
2008: 1"
2007: 8"
2006: 15"
2005: 0"
2004: Trace
2003: 0"
2002: 0"
2001: Trace

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