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 Spring 2025 will be posted on or shortly after June 10th, 2024, 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 Winter 2024/25 (DEC, JAN, FEB) were 127/33/80 with a Power Ball number of 104 for the season, meaning that the Winter 2024/25 was the 27th warmest summer in recorded history for the lower 48 states in the United States.
Hello again to all weather and climate geeks out there. Winter 2024/25 turned out to be the 27th warmest and the 104th coldest winter 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 March, April and May. 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 April 5th, 2024. If you wait until just before April 5th to make your picks, you can make an educated guess as to what the ranking for March will be and also have a heads-up guess for April.
The Power Ball (or overall National Center for Environment Information) number for Winter 2024/25 for the lower 48 states was 104, which was the 27th warmest ranking possible for the lower 48 states. I’ve defined individual lottery numbers as a rankings 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.
Here’s a breakdown of the National Climatic Center’s ranking numbers by state for Winter 2024/25, which was ranked at 27th warmest or 104th coldest (or a Powerball ranking of 104):
Warm conditions relative to average were widespread across the West with near average conditions across the nation’s heartland. No one state was below average.
The following is a breakdown of each month for Winter 2024/25. Each chart shows “Climate Lottery” numbers for each state (or rankings) from a scale of 1 to 131.
In December the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 127 (out of 130 through the year 2024):
Winter started out warm relative to average across most of the nation. December 2024 was the fourth warmest December on record. No one state saw below average temperatures. December was the warmest month of Winter 2024/25.
In January 2025 the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 33 (out of 131):
January 2025 was a colder than average month, which due to climate change is becoming quite rare. Our climate is not so broken yet that these colder than average months have gone the way of the doo doo bird. That’s what makes this contest interesting because it takes skill to forecast when these cold months might happen.
In February the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 80 (out of 131):
During February 2025 we saw a mixed bag of conditions across the lower 48 states. The overall ranking was 80, which was barely warmer than the median ranking which would be 65.5.
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 Winter 2024/25- 127/33/80 P.B. 104:
Notice that since the start of 2015 only three out of the last forty-one seasons were near average or “black.” No season was below average or colored blue. Thirty-eight out of the last forty-one seasons since 2015 have been “red” or “purple,” being above average. Winter 2024/25 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 season due to carbon pollution.
I hope that everyone will have a great, safe spring.
Guy Walton…”The Climate Guy”