Get Ready for a Year of Chaotic Weather in the US
Although it was declared The third hottest year on record, 2025 was a relatively quiet year in terms of weather disasters in the United States. No major hurricanes made landfall, while the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year — a way of measuring the intensity of the wildfire season — fell below the 10-year average.
But starting this week, the West is experiencing what appears to be a record heatwave, while forecast models predict a strong El Niño is likely to emerge later this year. These two unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long period of unpredictable and extreme weather into next year, worsening the effects of an increasingly warm climate due to human activity.
First there is the heat. Starting this week and continuing through next week, a massive ridge of high pressure air will bring record temperatures to the American West. The National Weather Service predicts that temperature records in several states are expected to be broken in dozens of locations, stretching as far east as Missouri and Tennessee. The NWS has issued heat warnings for parts of California, Arizona and Nevada, as well as fire warnings for parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota and Colorado.
“This will be the strongest ridge we’ve seen outside of summer in any month,” says Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
The other remarkable thing about this heat wave, Swain says, is its duration. “It’s not a day or two of extreme heat,” he said. “In some of these locations, we’ve already seen record highs every day for a week, and we expect to see them every day for at least another seven to 10 days.” The end of March will be much more intense, with temperatures in some places breaking April and May records. “There aren’t many weather conditions that can cause San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Denver to be 85 or 90 degrees in the same week.”
This late winter heat wave adds to an already warm winter in the West, with serious consequences for the summer. A month ago, snowpack levels in several states were at record lows thanks to warmer-than-average temperatures. According to data provided by the Department of Agriculture, snowpack levels were still less than 50 percent of average in many Western states. The snowpack is an essential natural reservoir for the rivers of the West; in many areas, between 60 and 70 percent of the region’s water supply comes from melting snow. A low snowpack is a bad sign for already stressed rivers like the Colorado, which provides water to 40 million people in seven states.
According to Swain, the current heat wave will most likely make conditions worse. “April 1 is usually when the snowpack is, at least historically, at its peak,” he says. Even as temperatures cool into summer, these low snow levels are also a worrying sign of the upcoming fire season. Snow droughts like the one experienced in the West can dry out the soil, kill trees and reduce the flow of rivers: ideal conditions for a wildfire to develop. Meanwhile, the Colorado River’s water supply could decline further. States that rely on the river already face a political crisis as they attempt to renegotiate water rights; a drought would only up the ante.
And then there is El Niño. Last week, the National Weather Service announced that there was a greater than 60 percent chance of an El Niño event in August or September. Different weather models suggest that this El Niño could be particularly strong. Although we probably won’t know for sure until the summer, “the fact that [all the models] “Things that are moving upwards are worth watching,” says Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
