What’s happening to our winters?

Editor’s note, January 26, 2026, 1:37 ET: As more extreme winter storms sweep through the nation and kids stay home from school, parents and teachers alike are rethinking what happens when bad weather strikes. The story below was originally published in 2024.

We had many superstitions when I was a kid. Wear your pajamas inside out. Or wear your underwear on the outside of your PJs. Gargle a bit of saltwater right before bed. When you put your shoes away, make sure they’re backward; left shoe on the right-hand side, right on the left.

It’s gearing up to be another scorching year.

Countries like Brazil, Thailand, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Australia, and Spain already experienced record warm temperatures this year, and in the past few days, heat has killed dozens in India and Mexico. Now states like California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas are getting ready to roast as a massive heat wave settles in. It’s likely to push temperatures well into triple digits. And summer hasn’t even officially started yet.

Dozens of wildfires are tearing through the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma after igniting earlier this week, including what’s now the second-largest wildfire in US history.

Dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the massive blaze, the largest in Texas’s history, has engulfed more than 1.1 million acres and was 3 percent contained as of Thursday morning, spurred by dry weather and high winds. The fire has killed at least one person, triggered evacuations, and shrouded a swath of the country in smoke. The encroaching flames forced the Pantex nuclear weapons manufacturing plant in Amarillo to shut down and sent cattle fleeing.

If you were to dip your toes into the middle of the North Atlantic — say, somewhere between South Carolina and Spain — the water would feel frigid. You definitely wouldn’t want to swim. It’s winter.

Yet that water would, in fact, be very warm, relatively speaking. Right now, the North Atlantic ocean is, on average, warmer than any other time on record, running about 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the average temperature over the last three decades.

After last year was the warmest on record, 2024 is already off to a ripping hot start.

January 2024 was the warmest January ever measured, and February is likely to follow.

It’s official: Month after record-breaking month, 2023 is now the hottest year humans have ever measured.

The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported Thursday that the period between February 2023 and January 2024 is the hottest 12-month span ever measured. During this time, global average temperatures rose 1.52 degrees Celsius — 2.74 degrees Fahrenheit — above average temperatures at the start of the Industrial Revolution, as measured between 1850 and 1900.

Bitter cold continues to grip the United States as unusual freezing temperatures stretch as far south as Florida this week. Even more chilly weather is in store through the weekend, putting more than 80 percent of the US population under some type of cold weather advisory.

But this jarring cold snap is sandwiched between the end of what was the hottest year on record and the start of another year that could be even hotter. And even as temperatures plunge to new depths, the recent weather isn’t remotely enough to derail an ominous trend.

A snowy winter in New York City brings with it a kind of magic. The air goes crisp, then bitter, and fragile snowflakes sift down in the early dark, silvering the trees and blanketing the sledding hills in the parks. After the first big snow, children and adults alike rush out to make snowmen, creations that delight passersby for the next two frigid months, until the snow finally thaws. When I took my older son, then a toddler, out for his first-ever sledding session, he squealed with awe at the crystalline world before him, shouting, “It looks like Frozen!”

Today he’s 5, and I doubt he remembers what sledding feels like. It’s been more than 650 days since Central Park, where snow is measured daily, got more than an inch of snowfall at one time; last winter, the park got just 2.3 inches in total, less than one-tenth the normal amount. In early December, Brooklyn saw a few anemic flurries, and my son told me excitedly that his friends had tried to build a snowman during recess. But there was nowhere near enough material to work with. They settled for “a pile of snowflakes.”

On the morning of October 24, Otis was a mere tropical storm with sustained winds of 70 miles per hour. Six hours later, the storm’s wind speed had nearly doubled and soon after it slammed into southwest Mexico as a Category 5 storm.

The National Hurricane Center warned “a nightmare scenario is unfolding for southern Mexico” as the storm landed on Acapulco.

Hot water is the fuel for tropical cyclones like hurricanes and typhoons, and the weather this year has boosted the octane rating of the world’s oceans, forcing forecasters to revise their predictions upward.

Water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are at the highest levels since at least 1981, and some United States coastal waters, like those around Florida, recently reached hot tub levels of warmth: more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

SOUFRIÈRE, Dominica — The clear waters here tend to be pleasantly warm year-round, a key part of the appeal for snorkelers and divers eager to see the elkhorn, brain, and flower corals just a few feet off the rocky beach.

The 72,000 residents of Dominica, a tiny volcanic island between Guadeloupe and Martinique, pride themselves on their relatively pristine coastline and bill their country as the Caribbean’s nature island.