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 Fall 2025 will be posted on or shortly after October 10th, 2025, 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 Summer 2025 (JUN, JUL, AUG) were 125/113/104 with a Power Ball number of 120 for the season, meaning that the Summer 2025 was the 12th warmest summer in recorded history for the lower 48 states in the United States.
Hello again to all weather and climate geeks out there. Summer 2025 turned out to be the 12th warmest and the 120th coolest summer on record for most of the United States. 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 September, October and November. Also, pick a “Power Ball” or overall ranking number for the spring 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 2025 will be the 131st year that the National Center for Environmental Information has been ranking years since 1895, all months for 2025 will have a warmest ranking of 131.
Please give your picks at guywalton94@Gmail.com or in the comments section at the end of this post before October 5th, 2025. If you wait until just before October 5th to make your picks, you can make an educated guess as to what the ranking for September will be and also have a heads-up guess for October.
The Power Ball (or overall National Center for Environment Information) number for Summer 2025 for the lower 48 states was 120, which was the 12th 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 130, 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 Summer 2025, which was ranked at 12th warmest or 120th coldest (or a Powerball ranking of 120):
Overall, Summer 2025 was well above average in the West and East with near average conditions across the central U.S.
The following is a breakdown of each month for Summer 2025. Each chart shows “Climate Lottery” numbers for each state (or rankings) from a scale of 1 to 131.
In June the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 125 (Out of from 1 to 131):
Summer started out very warm relative to average across most of the nation. June 2025 was the 7th hottest June on record. A few central states had near average conditions June was the warmest month of Summer 2025 relative to average.
In July 2025 the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 113 (out of 131):
Warm conditions relative to average were widespread across the East because of a historic heatwave. The Virginias had their hottest July on record. No one state was below average.
In August the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 104 (out of from 1 to 131):
The West continued to bake. During this day and age of global warming the atmosphere can still cause below average conditions for a large area for about a month, and that is what happened from the central Plains into the Southeast.
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 Summer 2025- 125/113/104 P.B. 120:
Notice that since the start of 2015 only three out of the last forty-two seasons were near average or “black.” No season was below average or colored blue. Thirty-eight out of the last forty-three seasons since 2015 have been “red” or “purple,” being above average. Summer 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 fall.
Guy Walton…”The Climate Guy”