Western Nebraska’s unseasonably warm and windy winter setting up for a dry season

Autumn seems to be giving a record-long Midwestern goodbye in some parts of Nebraska, where a lack of snowfall, or even intermittent rain, is leaving pastures dry and dusty.

“I think it’s certainly possible that there’s parts of Morrill County that I’m not sure they’ve actually had anything fall out of the sky since October,” University of Nebraska agricultural meteorologist Eric Hunt said.

Other than the southeast part of Nebraska, most areas of the state haven’t seen timely snow or rain for much of the winter season. The dry, warm and windy weather is setting the state up for a dry year, unless precipitation patterns change in the coming months.

“Just based on feedback from extension educators that cover that region of the state, things are getting pretty bad out there,” Hunt said. He said parts of western and southwestern Nebraska experienced one of the driest Decembers on record.

The lack of snowfall is similar to what Nebraska saw at the beginning of 2025, when meteorologists and climatologists warned it could be a record dry year with large wildfire potential. But a sudden burst of summer rain saved much of Nebraska and even aided in record crop yields just before harvest.

Dry conditions can greatly affect Nebraska’s ag business. Last year, when drought tightened its grip on much of the state, some cattle producers chose to send their livestock to feedlots rather than have them out in their pastures. Record drought conditions between 2021 and 2023 forced cattle producers to send many of their cattle to slaughterhouses, which subsequently greatly narrowed the U.S. cattle herd. The ramifications of those drought years are still playing out in 2026, when cattle prices remain at all-time highs and consumers are paying hefty prices for a pound of beef.

While Nebraska’s panhandle has historically been drier than eastern Nebraska’s row crop haven, Hunt said it’s unusual to see such a long stretch – close to a decade – of dry conditions.

“They’ve had periods where things have kind of started to recover, but they’ve never had a sustained, long-term recovery period that’s really allowed their pastures to regain full health,” Hunt said.

January also ushered in windy conditions, which have brought concerns of wildfires being kicked up. Without snow cover, the mixture of warm, sunny weather and wind can cause deepening issues for Nebraska’s lawns and ag fields.

“You can lose moisture out of the ground in the winter,” Hunt said. “Historically, we had cold enough temperatures and the ground was frozen. You wouldn’t necessarily be concerned about losing moisture out of the soil in the winter. Now, I think, increasingly, we have to be concerned about that.”

In an interview with Nebraska Public Media News, National Weather Service meteorologist Kenny Roberg said the average high temperature at the North Platte office for this month has been around 54 degrees, but the normal high in January tends to be around 41.

“We’re running close to about 15 degrees above normal for our average high temperature,” Roberg said.

The culmination of dry and warm weather is evident in the latest drought monitor map from the National Drought Mitigation Center. According to the report, about 42% of Nebraska is experiencing at least moderate drought. About 10% of the state, mostly around Box Butte, Morrill, Sheridan, Garden and Grant counties, is experiencing severe levels of drought.

Much of the widespread drought development has occurred in the last month, according to maps from the National Drought Mitigation Center.

“This year, we continue to be under a weak La Nina condition in the Pacific, and that seems to be having an effect on not getting a lot of moisture up across the Central Plains this winter,” Roberg said.

Western Nebraska’s neighbors are also seeing deepening dry conditions. The state benefits from winter snowfalls in Colorado and Wyoming, which feeds into the Platte River, recharges the Ogallala Aquifer and branches into Nebraska’s smaller streams.

“The snow pack is much below normal,” Roberg said. “We’re just not seeing much snow over the mountains yet. We hope to maybe see a little bit of increase as we go into the late winter and spring, but as of now, there’s a lot to make up for that.”

Colorado’s snowpack has reached an all-time low this winter with the snow-water equivalent at 4.8 inches. That’s just slightly below a prior record of 4.9 inches set in 2000. The National Weather Service is forecasting several instances of short bursts of flurries, but the dry spell is expected to persist into February. Unless the state sees a turnaround in snowfall come February or March, the 2025-26 season could record the lowest snowpack in the Centennial State’s history.

Southern Nebraska soaking in precipitation

Southeastern and parts of south-central Nebraska benefitted from lingering rainfall earlier in the month, when several communities either broke daily precipitation records for the month of January or came close. Accumulations ranged from half an inch of rain to three-quarters of an inch. It’s set up the southeast to sit in “pretty good shape,” Hunt said.

“You’re talking at least a top-five, if not top-three, wettest day for the month of January for this region, because that’s more than the average monthly precipitation for the month of January,” Hunt said.

And it was an instance where having a thawed ground was greatly beneficial.

“Normally in early January, the ground is not fully thawed,” Hunt said. “It’s probably at least partially, if not fully, frozen. In the past, we would’ve had some better precipitation totals in the month of January if precipitation wouldn’t have run off.”

But since early January’s light rainfall dropped steadily over several hours and temperatures sat in the upper 30s and 40s, it led to “optimal infiltration,” Hunt said.

So, while the sleds have been collecting dust since shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday, the southeast is at least capturing some much-needed moisture, which was reflected in the latest drought monitor map.