The weather we had in Jackson Hole in December 2025 can be summed up with the title of an old Clint Eastwood movie: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”.

Warm temperatures and rain in December are not the norm for Jackson Hole. But unusual weather patterns cause unusual weather, and that is what we had this past month or so, since November, actually.

November 2025 had record warm temperatures and was exceptionally dry. December 2025 only surrendered the dry part, as it became exceptionally wet but remained warm, warmer than any December in recent memory. Nevertheless, this past December was neither the warmest nor the wettest December on record.

The Bad: Valley Temps

Data from the Jackson Climate Station on the north end of town has the longest, most consistent record of weather data in the valley, and it’s what I use for historical comparisons. To begin, the average high temperature in Jackson for the month of December is 29 degrees. December of 2025’s average high temperature for the month was 38.8 degrees, or about 10 degrees warmer than normal.

That fell short of the record for the warmest average high temperature in Jackson in December, by several tenths of a degree. December of 1933 still holds this record with an average maximum temperature of 39.3 degrees.

The long-term average low temperature for December in Jackson is 7 degrees. The average low this past December was 21.9 degrees, or about 15 degrees warmer than normal. You may be surprised to know, that wasn’t even close to the record for the warmest average minimum temperature for the month of December. In 1917 the average low temperature for December was 24.9 degrees.

Perhaps the best gauge of overall warmth, or cold, for a month is the monthly mean temperature, or the average of both the average high and average low temperatures. December 2025’s mean temperature was 30.3 degrees, or 12 degrees warmer than the long-term average mean temperature in December of 18 degrees. But December 2025 did not break the record for the warmest December in Jackson.

Using that metric of mean temperature, the warmest December ever recorded in Jackson was 108 years ago, back in 1917, with a monthly mean temperature of 31.1 degrees.

Cumulative Warm Days and Nights

There were also several days in December 2025 that had high temperatures in the 40’s in town, a total of 16 days. That also fell short of a record, which is still held by December 1933, with a total of 18 days of 40 degrees or warmer.

Unusually warm overnight low temperatures were also present this past December, with a total of 7 days in town with a temperature of 32 degrees or warmer. Not as bad as December of 1917, which had a total of 12 days at or above freezing for overnight lows.

The warmest day of the month was on December 11th, 2025, with a high of 51 degrees. That’s 10 degrees shy of the all-time warmest December temperature of 61 degrees, from December 12th, 1921. However, the low temperature on the morning of December 11th, 2025 was 42 degrees, breaking the old record of 39 degrees on that date, from 2004.

The Ugly: Rain-Snow-Rain

The precipitation this past December came in waves of snow, followed by rain, followed by more snow, which was again washed away by more rain. Making for ugly conditions on the roads and causing a brown Christmas in town, for the first time in 30 years. Not since 1995 had we experienced no snow on the ground in Jackson on Christmas Day.

Total precipitation in the Town of Jackson in December 2025 was 3.58 inches, more than double the average in December of 1.52 inches, but well shy of any records. The wettest December in Jackson was in 1964, with 5.95 inches of precipitation. Two other Decembers broke the 5-inch mark, in 1955 and 1996.

Total snowfall in town in December 2025 was 14.6 inches, compared to an average snowfall in December of 17 inches. Settled snow depths though went from 5 inches on the ground on December 7th, 2025, to no snow on the ground from December 10th to 18th. Then back up to 5 inches on December 19th, and back to zero by December 22nd through the 26th. That marked the first Brown Christmas the Town of Jackson had since 1995, 30 years ago.

December snowfall returned and made a late inning run with 5 inches of snow on the ground by New Year’s Eve. It was a wild “snowler-coaster” ride in the valley this December.

The Good: Mountain Snow

The best thing about December 2025’s weather was the abundance of snow in the mountains. It was truly a tale of two different Decembers, depending on your altitude.

The Rendezvous Bowl weather station at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, at around the 9,600-foot elevation, recorded 104 inches of snowfall in December 2025. That’s 127 percent of the average snowfall at that site in December of 82 inches. This December’s snowfall on the upper mountains lies in-between the least amount of December snowfall, 16 inches in 1986, and the most snowfall in December, 225 inches in 1996.

The settled snow depth in Rendezvous Bowl at the end of December 2025 stood at 71 inches, which is the deepest snowpack measured there on December 31st since 2016, when it was at 86 inches. The average snow depth there on December 31st is 58 inches. Last season, it was at 59 inches. The shallowest snow depth recorded at Rendezvous Bowl on December 31st was 16 inches in 1976. The deepest was in 1996, with 114 inches.

So, the good news about December 2025 is that the snowpack in the mountains was plenty fat. Now, if we can just get the weather pattern to change a little, to keep it all snow to the valley floor, we’d really be looking good into the New Year.

Jim is the chief meteorologist at mountainweather.com and has been forecasting the weather in Jackson Hole and the Teton Range for almost 35 years.

Jackson Hole just experienced one of its warmest and driest Novembers on record, with a persistent weather pattern throughout most of the month that left a Ridge of High pressure sitting over a good portion of the Western United States and the Northern Rockies. Few storm systems were able to penetrate this Ridge, the storms that did mainly swung southward from the Pacific, across the Southwestern U.S. and Northern Rockies.

The result for Jackson Hole was little snow and temperatures too warm to keep the snow-guns going to make much man-made snow. Not a good combination for a ski resort town. Fortunately, a good stream of moisture in a Northwesterly flow starting the first week of December helped get things back up closer to normal in the mountains, at least. Unfortunately, warmer temps again by the second week of December will negate the snow down low.

In this post I’ll review the temperature, snowfall, and precipitation numbers from this past November and compare them to the historic averages and records.

Record Warm Temperature

There are different metrics you can use to determine how warm or how cold a month was: 1) Average monthly high temperature, 2) Average monthly low temperature, 3) Mean monthly temperature, which is the average of the high and low for the month.

All data reported here comes from the official instruments at the Jackson Climate Station.

1) November 2025’s average high temperature for the month was 48.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is 8 degrees warmer than the long-term average high in November of 40 degrees. The warmest day of the month was 64 degrees on November 3rd.

There have been five other Novembers with warmer average high temperatures than this past November’s 48.4 F: 1999 (51.6 F), 1954 (49.5 F), 1953 (48.5 F), 1949 (48.9 F), 1939 (50.8 F).

November 1999 had the warmest average high temperature on record (51.6 F). The coldest November on record was in 2022, just three years ago, with an average high for the month of 27.7 degrees.

2) November 2025’s average low temperature for the month was 22.9 degrees, or about 7 degrees warmer than the long-term average low in November of 16 degrees. The coldest day of the month was on November 25th, with a morning low temp of 5 degrees.

There were four other years when average low temperatures were as warm or warmer than this past November: 2017 (22.9 F), 2008 (23.8 F), and 1998 (24.8 F), 1926 (25.5 F).

That temp in 1926 qualified as the warmest average low temperature in the month of November. The coldest average low in November was in 1952, with an average low of 4 degrees for the month.

3) November 2025’s mean temperature was 35.6 F, which is about 8 degrees warmer than the long-term average, and qualifying as the warmest November mean temperature on record for the Town of Jackson. That broke the old record by a few tenths of a degree, from November 1953’s mean temp of 35.3 degrees. November 1949 is now in third place, with a monthly mean temperature in November of 35.2 degrees.

No other November with complete temperature records had as warm a combination of average high and low temperatures. What is even more amazing about breaking this warm temperature record is, just three years earlier in 2022 the coldest November mean temperature in Jackson was recorded. The mean temperature that November was 17.0 F, breaking the old record of 18.8 degrees from 1938, by nearly two degrees.

Low Snowfall & Precipitation

The Jackson Climate Station recorded 4 inches of snowfall for the month of November 2025. The historic average snowfall in November in town is 9 inches.

Four inches of snow in November might seem low because last November, in 2024, Jackson received almost 11 inches of snow. But the year before that, in November 2023, we only got 4.2 inches. And the year before that, in November 2022, we got 20.6 inches. But the year prior to that, in 2021, Jackson only had 1.3 inches of snowfall in November.

That is how up-and-down November snowfall can be from year to year. Looking back at the entire snowfall record for Jackson in November, for years with complete data, there were 14 other years with less snowfall in November than this one, going back to 1917. Two of those Novembers had absolutely no snow recorded in town in November: 1953, and 1939.

On the flip side, some of you may remember the snowiest November ever, that was in 1985 when 40 inches of snow fell in town that month.

Water content-wise, after well above average precipitation in October 2025, November 2025 ended up with a measly total of only 0.28 inches of precipitation in the Town of Jackson. The average precipitation in November is 1.30 inches.

This was not the driest November on record, but it was the driest we’ve seen here since 1976, when Jackson received only 0.10 inches that November. There were eight other years dating back to 1917 that were drier than this November: 1974, 1969, 1949, 1943, 1939, 1936, 1923, and 1917.

The driest November on record was in 1939, with no precipitation that entire month.

The wettest November on record was in 1988, with 4.24 inches of precipitation.

Post by meteorologist Jim Woodmencey

Fall is upon us, with cooler temperatures and a little snow showing up in the mountains in early October. This is the time of year when our mindset begins making the transition from hiking, biking, boating, and fishing to thoughts of skiing, snowboarding, snow-machining, or heading south to a warmer climate.

Given the change in seasons, this would be a good time to take a gander at this winter’s weather outlook, to see what we might expect for precipitation and temperatures in the coming months.

NOAA’s Outlook

The long-range outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center for the northern half of Wyoming and for all of Montana during the main winter months, December 2025 through February 2026, shows precipitation is expected to be in the above normal category for that three-month period. (Maps from NOAA’s Seasonal Outlook page).

Looking at the next three-month outlook period, January 2026 through March 2026, the forecast is even more solidly in the above normal precipitation category for Wyoming, including Jackson Hole and eastern Idaho. That bodes well for us as far as our chances of a good snowfall winter.

Temperatures this winter for most of the northern and central Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming northern Utah and central Colorado shows no trend either way, warmer or colder. Temps are in the “Equal Chance” category. The Equal Chances category means that the odds are the same for having above normal, below normal, or normal temperatures this winter.

Click here for: How to Read the 3-Class Three Month Outlooks

Below is the forecast map for December-January-February. The map for January-February-March looks very similar.

For comparison, last year at around this same time, NOAA’s forecast was for “Equal Chances” for both precipitation and temperatures. Temperatures ended up above normal in December, February, and March in the Town of Jackson. While snowfall ended up above normal for those three months – and also for the whole winter – both in town and up in the mountains. January was the only month last winter with below normal temperatures and below normal snowfall.

ENSO Forecast

ENSO is acronym for the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which describes the state of sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. El Nino is one phase of ENSO. Simply put, an El Nino is when sea surface temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific are warmer than normal. A La Nina is when those temperatures are colder than normal. Both El Nino and La Nina have some effect on the weather patterns that develop across the Pacific Ocean, primarily during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter season.

The common thinking is that an El Nino winter favors a more southern storm track across the Pacific, bringing above normal precipitation to California and the Sierras, as well as the Southwestern United States. La Nina winters favor more precipitation and snow over the northern tier of the United States, including Western Wyoming.

The latest ENSO forecast from October 9th, 2025 said: “La Niña conditions are present and favored to persist through December 2025 – February 2026, with a transition to ENSO-neutral likely in January-March 2026 (55% chance).

Be careful how much faith you put into ENSO forecasts. A recent study done in California showed that El Nino’s only produced above normal snowfall about 35-percent of the time. Therefore, the hype about El Nino that we have heard for the last 30 years may be a bit overdone. Same with La Nina’s in the northern tier, some La Nina years were very beneficial snowfall-wise, others were not.

Farmer’s Almanac

Now let’s review what the Farmers Almanacs have to say. There are two of them to look at, the Old Farmer’s Almanac and the Farmers’ Almanac.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac prediction, which has been around since 1792, calls for “Mild and Wet” conditions this winter for Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. And, “Mild and Dry” conditions for western Washington and Oregon, and all of California. Saying, “wet”, in the winter forecast would translate to more precipitation than normal, and thus more snow for the mountains, I’ll assume. Saying, “mild”, I suppose means temperatures will be near or just above normal.

The Farmers’ Almanac, which began its weather prognostications in 1818, has the most succinct forecast for the Rockies. They are calling for, “Very Cold and Snowy” conditions this winter for all of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Bingo! That does it. It’s confirmed. All forecasts for this winter are leaning towards more precipitation, which must mean we’ll have more snow that average here in Jackson Hole, right?

Final Words

One last thing to consider, from a statistical perspective: In the last seven years there has only been one winter, the winter of 2021-22, that registered below average snowfall at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Within the last seven years at JHMR, 5 of those winters ranked in the top-ten snowiest winters on record. Just three winters ago, in 2022-23, JHMR had their second snowiest winter ever. The question is, will this snowier than normal trend continue? Or, statistically speaking, are we due for a below average snowfall winter? The forecasts all say, “no”. Maybe it will be the next winter when the snowfall is leaner than normal.

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Post by Jim Woodmencey. Some of this text originally appeared in the Jackson Hole News and Guide, Mountain Weather column, on October 8th, 2025.

Jim is the chief meteorologist at mountainweather.com and has been forecasting the weather in Jackson Hole and the Teton Range for almost 35 years.