This was a very bad winter if you're concerned about the changing climate -- and of course you are.

Yale Climate Connections reports that Winter 2025-26 (December through February) was the second-warmest in U.S. records going back to 1895. The average temperature for the contiguous states was 37.13 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the monthly roundup released on March 9 by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. Given that the warmest winter on record was 2023-24, with 37.47 degrees F, the two warmest U.S. winters in 131 years of data have now occurred in the last three years.

Many parts of the northeastern half of the country, roughly from the Great Lakes into the Eastern Seaboard and Deep South, did see stretches of cold and snow that rivaled anything over the last few decades. Where you live, it might not have been a record-breaking winter at all – except for large stretches of the nation from the Great Plains westward, where many states and communities saw their warmest winter-long averages in more than a century of record-keeping.