ST. GEORGE, Utah — It was a little harder for it to begin feeling like Christmas in Washington County.
It was warm enough in St. George to be playing shirts versus skins pickleball.
“Really, it's just like really hot out here, like really hot,” 11-year-old Aiden Bartley said as he finished playing three hours of pickleball with his brother. He moved to St. George from Salt Lake City two months ago. He says he told his friends back home that at least temperature-wise, it's not feeling like Christmas in his new home.
“No, not at all,” he said. “No snow, no storms. Feels like summer now.”
With temperatures hovering in the mid-60s, shorts, short sleeves or no sleeves at all was the order of the day.
It was more than 10 degrees above normal. While St. George doesn’t have white Christmases — it last snowed on the 25th in 1916, it’s usually not time to break out the Bermuda shirts either.
“We moved here because it's supposed to be warm and then the past two years have been pretty cold for the winter so yeah this is definitely strange,” said 16-year-old Lucy May, who took to the Vernon Worthen Park pickleball courts herself on Monday with fellow 16-year-old opponent Ryleigh Goldoeich.
Celestial Noot had planned out a holiday party among her homeschool parents on Monday. The inflated polar bear and penguins showed what Noot thought the day was going to be like.
“I didn't think it was going to be this warm i actually thought we'd have to do it at my house,” Noot said. “I
Thought it was gonna be cold. And then I walked out and I was like, oh, it's so pretty. It's really lucky.”
That luck is running out. After some rain Tuesday, it’ll chill back to the normal 50s for Christmas day and 60 miles to the north in Cedar City, it will actually be a White Christmas.
