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Unseasonably warm holiday weather ‘unprecedented,’ but Midwest winters vary

WFIU | By Rebecca Thiele

Published December 29, 2025 at 2:55 PM EST

There’s a pine tree in the middle of the photo with the bell tower, a small pond and university buildings in the background. — The Metz Carillon bell tower looms over an arboretum on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus. Like the rest of Bloomington, this spot was blanketed with snow and ice two weeks ago.

The unusually warm temperatures in Bloomington broke a few records for the holiday week.

Austin Pearson is the assistant state climatologist for Indiana. He said Bloomington saw the highest weekly average temperature ever recorded for December 21-28 and tied 2015 for the warmest low temperature.

Pearson said though this past week’s temperatures were unprecedented, it’s hard to say how much greenhouse gas emissions played a role. He said Midwest winters vary a lot from year to year — both from long-term weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña as well as storms that move through.

David Beachler is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis. He said we started the winter with a lot of snow and cold temperatures.

That was before an atmospheric river hit the Pacific Northwest, causing flooding. Atmospheric rivers are long, flowing areas of water in the sky that often pick up warm, moist air from tropical regions and dump them on cooler areas as rain or snow. Beachler said that warm air worked its way east to Indiana.

“And that really set the stage for the really mild conditions that we observed several days around Christmas, up until really yesterday, when the pattern really shifted back towards a typical winter setup,” he said.

Beacher said we’re likely going to experience more periods like this this winter. It’s a La Niña year — a time when winter weather in the Midwest can be wetter and warmer than normal.

State climatologists say snow at Christmas time is also becoming fewer and far between, which is an indicator that winters are warming overall. According to the independent research and reporting collaboration Climate Central, more than half of all weather stations in the U-S are seeing less snow today than they did in the 1970s.

Pearson said there are some indicators that winters are warming overall.

“I certainly don't remember as many white Christmases as of recent times compared to what we had in the past,” he said.

According to the independent research and reporting collaboration Climate Central, more than half of all weather stations in the U.S. are seeing less snow today than they did in the 1970s.