Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook for the Western Region for December 2024–February 2025. Dated March 2025.
Winter temperatures were above normal across the Southwest with California and Arizona both ranking as the fourth warmest on record. Temperatures were closer to normal in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies with some areas of below-normal temperatures in Montana. Winter precipitation was much below normal across the Southwest. Much of Oregon, eastern Washington, southern Idaho, and Montana saw above-normal winter precipitation.
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and Physical Sciences Laboratory are partnering with the California State Climatologist/California Department of Water Resources, NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Centers for Environmental Information, and the California-Nevada Adaptation Program (a NOAA CAP team) on the Sector-Specific Drought Early Warning Outlook – Southern California Pilot.
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and Physical Sciences Laboratory are partnering with the California State Climatologist/California Department of Water Resources, NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Centers for Environmental Information, and the California-Nevada Adaptation Program (a NOAA CAP team) on the Sector-Specific Drought Early Warning Outlook – Southern California Pilot.
This NIDIS-funded study, led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder/Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), identified challenges in predicting seasonal water supply during drought years in snow-dominated basins of the western United States due to climate warming.
Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook for the Western Region for September–November 2024. Dated December 2024.
Autumn temperatures were above normal across the West, and every state except for Oregon had a top ten warmest autumn since 1895. Northern California, southern Oregon, central Montana, and northeast New Mexico all saw areas of well-above-normal precipitation in autumn. Southeast California, southern Nevada, and western Arizona were exceptionally dry.