The NOAA/CPC meteorological winter 2025-26 forecast is cold and snowy across the northern states from Washington to Michigan while the Ohio Valley turns stormy likely favoring snow. The southern tier of the U.S. is dry and warm.

The early season snow cover across the northern hemisphere is ahead of schedule in Mongolia, far Northeast China, and Southern Russia. Alaska and Canada have below normal snow cover for mid-October although a recent streak of snow was observed across parts of the Canadian Prairies. As usual, early season expansive snow cover encouraged a much colder than normal air mass to evolve across Northeast Eurasia featuring 5-day temperature anomalies of 20-30F below normal.

ECM projects the Greenland Block to continue and finally produce cool troughs into the Ohio Valley/Mid-Atlantic States and Northwest Eurasia late this month into early November. Expect a cooler U.S. pattern especially in the East, as November approaches.

So far, the Caribbean Sea has not observed a tropical cyclone in 2025 while only 1 tropical cyclone formed in the Gulf of Mexico. The last time each basin was inactive to this extreme were during strong El Nino years (1997, no activity in The Caribbean and 2015, 1 tropical cyclone in the Gulf of Mexico). Part of the explanation is the mid-troposphere anomalous dry air strongly identified in the Caribbean Sea since June.