December 2025 was a wild month for weather across Washington.
An atmospheric river dumped historic amounts of rainfall on northwest Washington in early December, leading to flooding, landslides, and power outages.
A few days later, a windstorm swept across eastern Washington. Gusts of 83 miles per hour were recorded in Pullman, accompanied by an unusual winter thunderstorm.
In this episode, Josh Ward and Jon Contezac discuss significant weather events of 2025. They are field meteorologists for Washington State University’s AgWeatherNet.
The past year was the third hottest on record for the planet. It was the fourth hottest on record for the United States. However, damage costs from extreme weather events were lower than previous years.
The year started with fires that razed 58-square miles around Los Angeles. Thirty-one people were killed and more than 16,000 structures burned during the January fires. Tornados killed 43 people in the central United States last year.
In the Pacific Northwest, the Bear Gulch Fire in Olympic National Park burned from July to November. Meanwhile, an unusually warm fall and early winter has hampered the region’s snowpack accrual.
AgWeatherNet at Washington State University