NOAA’s summary of winter 2024-25 for the contiguous 48 states, released on March 10, closed the books with a verdict you might have guessed: despite some prolonged chilliness at certain times and places, and one winter storm for the ages, it was far less fierce than most of the winters dished out through the late 20th century.
The average 48-state temperature for meteorological winter (December through February) came in at 34.09 degrees Fahrenheit (1.16 degrees Celsius). That’s the 27th highest reading among the 130 winters in the NOAA database extending back to 1895. Just one year ago, the nation wrapped up its warmest winter in contiguous U.S. history.
For most Americans, winter 2024-25 was marked less by brutal Arctic outbreaks and more by some long stretches of chillier-than-average weather in midwinter, especially toward the eastern U.S. The nation’s fourth warmest December was followed by the 33rd-coldest January and the 52nd-warmest February.
No state had a significantly cooler-than-average winter compared to the past 130 years. Arizona and Nevada had their fourth warmest winter on record and Nevada its eighth warmest.
The standout event of the winter was the bizarre, historic snowstorm that swept along the upper U.S. Gulf Coast on January 21. For most locations, it was a once-in-a-generation to a once-in-a-century snowfall, rivaled only by a similarly freakish storm on Valentine’s Day 1895 that dropped 10 to 20 inches from roughly Houston to New Orleans. Among the locations that broke all-time records for a single storm this time were Mobile, AL (7.5”), Pensacola, FL (8.9”), and the New Orleans airport (8.0”). Several locations in Florida smashed the state’s previous snow record of 4.0” set in Milton in March 1954; one of those was Milton itself, which racked up 8.9”.
In the wake of this quick-hitting storm, fresh snowpack and clear skies allowed temperatures to plunge to absurd values for coastal Louisiana, including all-time lows of 2°F in New Iberia, 4°F in Lafayette, 7°F in Jennings, and 7°F at the Baton Rouge airport. Nationwide, however, the month of January was only modestly colder than the long-term average, and much of the northern U.S. tier got markedly less snowfall than usual.
As we’ll see in the global climate roundup later this week, there was a dramatic contrast between a chillier-than-average U.S. winter and a warmer-than-average one in Canada. This topsy-turvy setup, more typical of El Niño than La Niña winters, bears some hallmarks of the kind of warm Arctic/chilly midlatitude pattern studied for over a decade as a potential byproduct of human-caused climate change (see our recent deep dive on this research topic).
Another calamitous California firestorm – but this time in January
Winter 2024-25 was on the arid side for most parts of the country, ranking 20th-driest for the contiguous U.S. as a whole out of 130 years of recordkeeping. Arizona and New Mexico had their second driest winter on record and Utah its eighth driest; no state had a top-ten wettest winter.
By far the biggest U.S. disaster of the winter was the pair of devastating wildfires that swept through parts of Los Angeles in early January. Based on preliminary data, CALFIRE has ranked the Eaton and Palisades as the second and third most destructive wildfires (by number of structures destroyed) in modern state history, respectively destroying 9,413 and 6,833 structures and taking 17 and 12 lives. Although the Camp Fire of 2018 destroyed more structures than the Eaton and Palisades fires combined, the L.A. fires will be far more costly given the high property values of the area; preliminary estimates of insured losses have averaged about $31 billion, which would make them the costliest wildfires in world history.
The stage was set for L.A.’s twin fire disasters by one of the driest starts to the winter wet season on record, dessicating a landscape that had been nurtured by ample moisture in early 2024. Overlaid on that tinderbox was a rare meteorological setup producing mountain-driven atmospheric waves that pushed high winds much further into Los Angeles than usual for Santa Ana wind events. This unusually intense windstorm might not have led to such disastrous fire if the landscape had already been moistened by winter rains, as is much more typical for early January.
By the end of February, a sequence of Pacific storms had given much of coastal California some much-needed relief. However, the interior Southwest remained parched. In Arizona, this was the second driest winter in 131 years of recordkeeping for Tucson (0.25”) and the third driest in 130 years for Phoenix (0.03”).
As of the first week of March, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed that close to 45% of the contiguous U.S. was undergoing some level of drought. That’s similar to the 44% of early December, but still a less-than-comforting value given how quickly drought can intensify in spring and summer. NOAA’s latest seasonal drought outlook (see Fig. 4 below) projects drought to expand from the Central Rockies through the Southern Plains as well as across Florida over the next three months.
Severe outbreak on Friday and Saturday could bring multiple tornadoes
A strong jet stream will be shuttling upper-air disturbances across the nation over the next couple of weeks. It’s a cranked-up version of a classic March pattern, and it’s not too early in the year for such a pattern to spawn multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms.
The biggest concern right now revolves around what could become one of the most powerful early-spring storms on record across the Central Plains. Multiple runs of the GFS model over the weekend depicted a surface low intensifying to pressures in the 970-975 mb (hPa) range over Kansas and Nebraska late this week. That’s close to the lowest values ever recorded in these locations at any time of year. The European model hasn’t been quite so fevered, but it’s still been predicting pressures in the 975- to 980-mb range.
These central pressure values wouldn’t be out of line for a Category 1 hurricane – but of course this won’t be that. In a non-tropical midlatitude cyclone, the wind-producing pressure gradient is much broader than with a hurricane. This means winds won’t be sustained at hurricane strength, but they could still be fierce enough across large parts of the Plains to bring down tree limbs and power lines and blot out highway visibility with blowing dust.
On the northwest side of the low, blizzard conditions could push across parts of the Central and Northern Plains from eastern Colorado to North Dakota.
Meanwhile, along the cold front extending south of the low, intense thunderstorms are likely to erupt on Friday and sweep across parts of Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas and into western Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee by evening. (Note that this rough timing could shift by 12 hours or more). A second upper-level disturbance may spawn another round of severe weather on Saturday further south and east, perhaps from eastern Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.
A slug of just-in-time Gulf moisture will be pulled north just ahead of the front on Friday. It’s possible the system will end up moisture-starved that day, limiting the northward extent of the most intense severe weather. But with such an intense, cold upper-level low racing through, only a modest amount of moisture could be enough to generate thunderstorms – and the wind shear that nurtures supercell thunderstorms will likely be at or near extreme levels. Given the size and strength of the parent storm system, tornadic supercells could erupt over a broad area before congealing into one or more intense squall lines.
On Monday morning, March 10, the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center flagged areas centered on Arkansas for Friday and Mississippi and Alabama for Saturday with the highest severe probabilities allowed this far in advance (see Fig. 5 above). Ample moisture should be in place by Saturday, which will boost the odds of torrential rainfall, but severe weather on Saturday will be highly dependent on interaction with any storms left over from Friday night.
Jeff Masters contributed to this post.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
