The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: The Climate Lottery: Winter 2025/26 Contest
Dear Diary. It’s time for a little fun by playing my contest held once per season.
The Climate Lottery is a forecast contest free to play by giving your picks in an e-mail or in this post’s comment section. No prizes will be given out for the contest, which is for educational purposes only. The main purpose for the contest is to get climate change conscious people interested in National Center for Environmental Information climate products. The special account that I have set up for the contest is guywalton94@gmail.com. This time I will make a personal pick, following along with any players.
I’m getting all of my information for every Climate Lottery contest here, which I hope you will refer to often:
National Maps | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (noaa.gov)
The National Center for Environmental Information ranking numbers for average temperatures of the lower 48 states for Winter 2025/26 will be posted on or shortly after March 8th, 2026, which will be the official “Climate Lottery” numbers of the contest. Any subsequent changes by NCEI after their initial posted rankings will not be valid for the contest…but those ranking numbers will change with time.
The winning Climate Lottery numbers for Fall 2025 (SEP, OCT, NOV) were 125/124/128 with a Power Ball number of 129 for the season, meaning that the Fall 2025 was the 3rd warmest Fall in recorded history for the lower 48 states in the United States.
Hello again to all weather and climate geeks out there. Fall 2025 turned out to be the 3rd warmest and the 129th coolest fall on record for most of the United States since measurements for that statistic have been kept in 1895. If you wish to play “The Climate Lottery,” pick one number between 1 and 131 (with 1 representing the coldest possible ranking and 131 being the highest possible ranking) for December, and 1 to 132 for January and February. Also, pick a “Power Ball” or overall ranking number for the winter season as a whole between 1 and 131. The Power Ball ranking will serve as a tiebreaker for any close picks between contestants. Your picks are NCEI rankings for average temperatures across the lower 48 states. Because 2026 will be the 132nd year that the National Center for Environmental Information has been ranking years since 1895, all months for 2026 will have a warmest ranking of 132.
Please give your picks at guywalton94@Gmail.com or in the comments section at the end of this post before January 6th, 2026. If you wait until just before January 6th to make your picks, you can make an educated guess as to what the ranking for December will be and also have a heads-up guess for January.
The Power Ball (or overall National Center for Environment Information) number for Fall 2026 for the lower 48 states was 129, which was the 3rd warmest ranking possible for the lower 48 states. I’ve defined individual lottery numbers as a ranking for each month for the lower 48 states, Power Ball numbers as those for each season, and Mega Ball numbers as those for each year. The Mega Ball number for 2024 was 131, meaning that 2024 was the warmest year on record for the lower 48 states.
Chances for an entire season of below average temperatures are becoming much less likely across the lower 48 states due to carbon pollution. The whole point of these posts is to demonstrate how skewed temperatures have become towards warmth due to climate change and to get people to look at NCEI data. Of course, as far as the globe goes, the larger an area that is compared to average, the more likely that area is to be above long-term averages. What has happened this decade is yet more proof of the Climate Lottery game being loaded for warmth in the United States. Balls coming out of the Climate Lottery hopper are likely to have high numbers.
Charts used below can be found here:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/us-maps
Here’s a breakdown of the National Climatic Center’s ranking numbers by state for Fall 2025, which was ranked at 3rd warmest or 129th coldest (or a Powerball ranking of 129):
Overall, Fall 2025 was well above average in the west and central U.S. with near average conditions across the Southeast. Several western states and Texas had their warmest fall on record.
The following is a breakdown of each month for Fall 2025. Each chart shows “Climate Lottery” numbers for each state (or rankings) from a scale of 1 to 131.
In September the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 125 (Out of from 1 to 131):
Fall started out very warm relative to average across most of the nation and particular the northern tier of states September 2025 was the 6th warmest September on record. Washington and Oregon had their warmest Septembers on record.
In October 2025 the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 124 (out of 131):
Warm conditions relative to average were widespread across the central U.S. Just like in September, no one state had below average conditions.
In November the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 128 (out of from 1 to 131):
The West had record to near record warm conditions during November. Only the Northeast and Florida saw near average temperatures.
The following are the rankings, so far, for individual months or “Climate Lottery number picks” from 2015-2025:
The average ranking for 2025 is 65.5 since the coldest ranking would be 1 and the hottest 131. I have color coded all well below average temperature rankings for this post at or below 55 blue and all those above temperature rankings at or above 75 red, with rankings + or – 10 from the mean value of 65.5 black for near average temperature rankings. Record warmest months are highlighted in purple. With time, the rankings for each individual month, season and year will change as more data becomes available from NCEI. Also, for reference, the annual or “Mega Ball” numbers are shown on the chart. For example, the Mega Ball number for 2022 was 111, meaning that 2022 was the eighteenth warmest year on record for the lower 48 states.
Seasonal or Power Ball rankings for winter are those for DEC/JAN/FEB, spring are MAR/APR/MAY, summer JUN/JUL/AUG, and fall SEP/OCT/NOV. Mega Ball rankings for each year are included on the chart below. Also, keep in mind that NCEI rankings for seasons are not merely an average of rankings of individual month of a season or year, as was the case for Fall 2025- 125/124/128 P.B. 129:
Notice that since the start of 2015 only three out of the last forty-four seasons were near average or “black.” No season was below average or colored blue. Forty-one out of the last forty-four seasons since 2015 have been “red” or “purple,” being above average. Fall 2025 definitely adds to our warm stats and was also colored red. Indeed, the Climate Lottery hopper is very much loaded for above average temperatures for the lower 48 states looking at recent history. Yes, the “Casino of Climate Averages” is cheating causing the “House of Warming” to win just about every new season due to carbon pollution.
I hope that everyone will have a great, safe winter.
Guy Walton…”The Climate Guy”
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Wednesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)