Anyone who’s lived in Chicago for a few years knows one thing for certain: It’s not a question of if it’ll snow, but how much. This fall, however, the city has barely seen snowflakes, let alone snow accumulation.

       According to National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Kluber, we might finally be seeing that first 10th of an inch — the weather service’s minimum amount of measurable snow — next week. While forecasters haven’t ruled out the chance of snow early Sunday morning, Kluber said it’s “not looking likely at this point.”

       Snow might fall a little Monday morning as cold air moves in behind showers Sunday morning, but still, the potential for accumulation is low.

       The most likely day for Chicago’s first snow accumulation, Kluber said, is sometime during the late afternoon into the evening Tuesday.

       “The bulk of the precipitation may split up to the south and then another wave to the north on that day,” Kluber said. “But of all the days coming up here, that’s probably our best shot.”

       Chicago is overdue for snow, the weather service said. The average day by which we usually see snow on the ground is Nov. 18. The city’s “meteorological fall,” which looks at September, October and November, was about 2.9 degrees warmer than usual this year.

       However, Kluber said, November was actually fairly close to average for Chicago, but it was dryer than usual despite the effects of La Nina, which usually means more precipitation for the Midwest.

       “The pattern does tend to favor a little bit wetter than normal for us, but doesn’t necessarily mean it will be,” Kluber said. “It’s kind of like a feast or famine, sometimes with the La Nina pattern where you can get yourself in a storm track and be very active for a long period of time. But we didn’t find ourselves in the track of those storms (this year).”

       The same unpredictability that made this fall drier than usual means it’s difficult to predict exactly how much snow Chicagoans can hope to see on Christmas morning.

       While the weather service doesn’t typically speculate several weeks in advance, AccuWeather, a national weather forecasting service, has predicted a 50% to 75% chance of snow for a large swath of the Midwest based on historical patterns, even predicting a higher chance for a white Christmas than normal in Chicago, due in part to the usual effects of La Nina.

       A Christmas Eve snow on Chicago's lakefront gave Chicago its last white Christmas, Dec. 24, 2017. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

       AccuWeather defines a “white Christmas” as having at least an inch of snow on the ground for the holiday. Kluber said it’s simply too far out to guess at snowfall for the big holiday, especially since it’s such a “sensitive” matter for many households.

       “We could have a very warm December, but all it takes is just one small system to come through on Christmas morning and drop 2 inches of snow and that could be an outlier for the whole month,” Kluber said. “But it still technically would qualify as a white Christmas.”

       This weekend, forecasters said Chicago can expect below freezing nighttime temperatures with daily highs in the mid-40s or low 50s. There’s a chance of freezing rain Sunday night with a low possibility of snow.

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