What Cold? Parts Of The West Are Basking In Record Warmth This Week

Fall 2025 Temperature And Precipitation Superlatives

Record warm mid-December temperatures are forecast for parts of the West through the weekend even as parts of the Midwest and East shiver in brutal cold.

Records Already Set

We've already seen some attention-grabbing highs in the West this week.

For example, the nation's hottest temperature Wednesday was in Southern California, where the Native American community of Pala in San Diego County soared to 91 degrees.

In the Southern California mountains, Big Bear set an all-time December record (72 degrees) Tuesday.

And even while being soaked by an atmospheric river, Seattle set a record high of 53 degrees just before midnight late Tuesday night. Portland, Oregon, had a record warm low of 58 degrees on Wednesday, 11 degrees warmer than their average high for the day.

Perhaps most weird, Yakima, Washington, despite being blanketed in clouds from the atmospheric river, tied their all-time December record high of 72 degrees Wednesday, only 1 degree cooler than the high in Las Vegas, which was in itself almost a daily record.

More To Come

We're forecasting potential daily record high temperatures each day through this weekend in parts of the West, from the Great Basin to the Desert Southwest and California.

Want some highlights?

How about low 70s for highs in Las Vegas? It means you won't need to stay in the casinos, but can also enjoy a walk along The Strip without a jacket in the afternoon.

Better yet, how about upper 70s or 80s in L.A., Phoenix and Tucson. And we are months away from the start of the Cactus League.

And, frankly, highs in the 50s to near 60 in Portland, Salt Lake City and Reno are pretty awesome for mid-December.

This is all happening as the Midwest and East will feel another brutal cold blast this weekend.

(MAPS: 10-Day US Forecast Highs/Lows)

Why So Warm?

There's often a yin and yang to temperatures across the country. If one area is colder than usual, another area is warmer.

In this case, the jet stream over the West Coast has bulged northward toward Washington state and British Columbia from high pressure. If this was summer, we'd probably call that high pressure area a "heat dome".

Near that ridge, air is slowly sinking, maximizing sunshine and keeping any Pacific storms and arctic air away from the Southwest. (Though as weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Belles pointed out, that sinking air is also contributing to stubborn fog in California's Central Valley known as "tule fog").

Like any wave, though, this western northward bulge in the jet means the jet nosedives into the Midwest and East, pulling cold air into those areas.

More Warm Than Cold Records, Again

Even with all these warm records in the West, there are fewer cold records threatened by the Midwest and East weekend cold snap.

While we certainly have had cold snaps set records, including early last month, 2025 has been another year dominated by warm records, so far.

According to NOAA statistics, there have been more than 2 daily warm records tied or set for every cold record so far in 2025 through December 8, as the graph below shows.

If we consider records set for a given month, that ratio rises to about 5 monthly warm records for any monthly cold record this year. And for all-time records, warm records in 2025 outnumber cold by 185 to 52, so far.

This skewed ratio is something seen increasingly often this century, according to both Climate Central and research kicked off years ago by former The Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton.

This past meteorological fall — September through November — was one of the nation's warmest in 131 years, NOAA calculated.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.