NOAA: Winter 2025-26 Set Record for Warm Daytime Highs Across the Lower 48, Despite Blizzards and Cold Snaps

On paper, the winter of 2025-26 was the warmest on record for daytime temperatures across the Lower 48 states. From December through February, the average high in the contiguous United States climbed to 48.3 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a new analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

That is 5.6 degrees above the 20th-century average for winter afternoons — the largest such departure in 131 years of instrument records and the first time the national wintertime average high has topped 48 degrees.

Yet for many Americans, this winter will be remembered for something else: a bitter late-January cold wave, a historic blizzard that buried parts of New England in snow, and a wildfire so intense in a parched Florida swamp that it shut down Interstate 75.

The new report, released this month, pulls those seemingly contradictory experiences together into a single picture: a winter that was statistically hot, broadly dry and marked by sharp swings between extremes.

Record warm days, near-record warmth overall

“This winter, daytime high temperatures were particularly notable, with the CONUS averaging 48.3°F — 5.6°F above average — marking the warmest winter for daytime highs in the 131-year record,” NOAA’s climate center said in its summary of the season. The acronym CONUS refers to the contiguous United States.

Overall, when daytime and nighttime temperatures are combined, the national winter ranked as the second-warmest on record, just behind the winter of 2023-24. The average temperature from Dec. 1 through Feb. 29 was 37.1 degrees, or 4.9 degrees above the long-term norm.

Nine states, mostly in the West and South, logged their warmest winter on record for overall temperature. Eleven set records for the warmest average daytime highs. At the county level, NOAA found that 585 counties — home to more than 116 million people, roughly one-third of the U.S. population — recorded their hottest winter days in at least a century.

The warmth was most pronounced from the Southwest through the southern Plains and into parts of the South. Arizona, New Mexico and Utah each broke their previous warmest-winter records by more than 2 degrees, an unusually large margin for climate statistics. In Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reported 16 days this winter with highs of at least 80 degrees, the most since records began there in 1898 and about 60% more than the previous record set in 2016-17.

In late February, parts of southern Texas and the Desert Southwest saw temperatures surge into the 90s on multiple days, conditions more typical of late spring than midwinter.

Northeast cold outlier and major winter storms

At the same time, much of the Northeast stood out as a cool outlier. As a region, it finished the winter in the coldest third of its historical record. A powerful “bomb cyclone” from Feb. 22-24 brought hurricane-force wind gusts and heavy snow from the Mid-Atlantic to New England, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of customers and disrupting travel.

Providence, Rhode Island, recorded 37.9 inches of snow from that storm, its largest snowstorm on record. NOAA classified the event as a major Northeast winter storm on its Regional Snowfall Index, saying it affected more than 115 million people, including about 28 million who saw at least a foot of snow.

The winter’s split personality also showed up in the calendar. A sharp cold wave in late January and early February drove temperatures well below zero across parts of the Midwest and interior Northeast. In North Carolina, the state climate office reported that Lumberton dropped to minus 1 degree, an all-time February low, while several Florida cities also set record cold marks for the month.

Those bursts of cold did not offset the dominant warmth in the national average, but they shaped how millions perceived the season.

“The public experiences weather, not statistical averages,” said state climatologists in the Carolinas and Florida in separate monthly reports, noting that the combination of cold snaps and heat waves can obscure the longer-term warming trend.

A broadly dry winter, with drought expanding

The warmth came alongside striking dryness. Nationally, total winter precipitation for the Lower 48 was 4.95 inches, about 1.84 inches below the 20th-century average. That made it the fifth-driest winter since 1895. Eighteen states registered one of their 10 driest winters on record.

By the first week of March, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed about 54.9% of the contiguous United States in some level of drought, an increase of roughly 10 percentage points in a month. Dryness persisted across large parts of the Rockies and interior West and spread or intensified in the northern Rockies, Plains, Mississippi Valley, South and Southeast.

“Drought persisted across much of the Rockies and the eastern seaboard and expanded or intensified across portions of the northern Rockies, Plains, Mississippi Valley, South and Southeast,” NOAA said.

Snow drought in the West raises water concerns

In the West, the combination of warmth and limited storms produced what water managers call a “snow drought.” The Sierra Nevada picked up several feet of snow from early February storms, but the snowpack there still remained below three-quarters of normal for late February.

The California-Nevada River Forecast Center reported that statewide Sierra snowpack slipped from about 95% of average on Jan. 6 to just 53% by Feb. 9 after a largely warm and dry five-week stretch. In Washington, the Natural Resources Conservation Service measured statewide snow-water equivalent — a key gauge of how much water is stored in mountain snow — at 54% of normal on March 1 and warned that “below-normal spring and summer runoff is likely” in many basins.

In Idaho, federal forecasters said it was “highly unlikely” that snowpack would recover to normal levels by early April, a sign that irrigation supplies, reservoir operations and hydropower generation could be tighter later this year.

“Stormy, briefly colder weather in California and elsewhere in the West helped to improve previously meager mountain snowpack,” the NRCS National Water and Climate Center wrote in a late-February update. “Meanwhile, the nation’s mid-section faced several days with record-setting warmth and gusty winds. Portions of the central and southern High Plains endured a rash of wildfires.”

Wildfires flare from the High Plains to Florida

One of those fires, the Ranger Road Fire along the Oklahoma-Kansas border, burned more than 280,000 acres in a matter of days, according to federal summaries. Grasslands dried by months of low precipitation and blasted by hot, dry winds fueled the rapid spread, damaging ranchland and threatening homes.

Across the country, Florida offered another example of how a warm, dry winter can feed unseasonable flames.

From December through February, rainfall deficits of 3 to 7 inches spread across the Florida Peninsula, state climate data show. West Palm Beach and the coastal city of Stuart both logged their second-driest winters on record, more than 7 inches below normal.

By late February, about 99% of Florida was in drought, with roughly two-thirds of the state in extreme drought, classified as D3 on the U.S. Drought Monitor’s five-step scale.

“By mid-month, drought continued to affect virtually all of Florida with 99% of the state in some level of drought,” the Florida Climate Center said in its February summary. “The largest wildfire was the National Fire in the Big Cypress National Preserve… which had burned more than 35,000 acres, affected visibility in the region, and closed several roadways including a portion of I‑75 known as Alligator Alley.”

That fire, ignited around Feb. 22 in Big Cypress National Preserve in Collier County, grew quickly in parched marsh and cypress forest. Park officials and state authorities said extreme drought, very low humidity and frost-killed vegetation created unusually receptive fuels. Sections of Interstate 75 were repeatedly shut as smoke cut visibility for motorists.

The same dry pattern contributed to heavy agricultural losses. The Florida Climate Center estimated that a combination of hard freezes and drought this winter caused about $3.2 billion in losses to strawberries, blueberries, sugarcane, citrus, vegetables and pasture. Growers also faced strains on water supplies used for frost protection.

Elsewhere in the Southeast, parts of the Carolinas and Georgia entered spring with precipitation deficits of 6 to 12 inches dating back to September. “Charlotte and Raleigh just wrapped up their driest September through February period on record, with barely half of their normal precipitation,” the North Carolina State Climate Office reported. “After six months of record-breaking dryness like that, one month with average precipitation like February won’t make the drought suddenly disappear.”

La Niña backdrop, long-term warming signal

The winter unfolded against the backdrop of a weak to moderate La Niña, a natural climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that can influence U.S. weather. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center kept a La Niña advisory in effect through the season while projecting a transition to neutral conditions between February and April.

Historically, La Niña winters have sometimes brought colder and stormier conditions to parts of the northern United States. That this winter still produced record daytime warmth for the nation as a whole underscores the role of long-term warming in tilting seasonal averages upward, climate scientists say. The second-warmest overall U.S. winter arrived just two years after the warmest, in 2023-24.

Alaska and Hawaii: opposite ends of the spectrum

Alaska and Hawaii offered their own contrasts. Alaska’s statewide winter temperature averaged 0.8 degrees, about 2.8 degrees below its 1925-2000 norm, placing it in the coldest third of its record. Fairbanks Airport recorded its coldest winter since 1970-71. Hawaii, in contrast, was slightly warmer than average and saw bouts of extreme rainfall from powerful Kona low storms that dumped more than 25 inches of rain in a day at some locations.

What lingers into spring

As the country moves into spring, many of the season’s imbalances will linger. Western snowpack shortfalls could mean lower river flows and more pressure on reservoirs across the Colorado and Columbia basins. Drought across the Plains and Southeast has set the stage for an early and possibly severe wildfire season. Farmers in the Southeast and High Plains are watching skies for sustained rains to rebuild soil moisture before peak growing season.

The winter of 2025-26, in the numbers now laid out by NOAA, was not just a record for warm afternoons. It was a preview of a new kind of American winter: one in which days are, on average, milder than in the past, but the risks of drought, wildfire and disruptive storms remain — and in some cases intensify — even as the snow cover shrinks.