Though Texans experienced a searing early start to summer temps in May of 2025, across most of Texas the heat felt significantly less intense after the records-shattering 2024—declared the hottest year ever recorded—and the months of triple-digit temps the year before in 2023.
2025 is expected to be ranked among the three hottest years on record globally, marked by tremendously destructive storms and climatic violence. But even our moderated summer scorching lingered more deep through the fall and winter, delivering temps in the 80s over the holidays for much of the state. We exchanged “sweater weather for sweating weather,” as one cleaver Dallas Morning News copy editor summarized.
Get used to it.
While temps across 194 U.S. cities reviewed using NOAA weather data and the Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index (CSI) averaged about 0.4F warmer on average, many regions, in particular Western states, were far hotter than that. And “long-term December warming trends show that nearly all cities analyzed have warmed since 1970, consistent with findings from Climate Central’s 2025 Winter Package,” Climate Central researchers wrote this week.
Twelve U.S. cities logged their hottest Decembers on record, the Climate Central team found. And: “No U.S. cities had record-breaking cold,” CC Research Associate Joseph Giguere confirmed for Deceleration.
Averaging the 17 Texas cities analyzed by Climate Central shows a collective 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit above historical norms last month.
This is a trend hitting cities across the state that is unlikely to shift until we shift away from fossil fuels, which take massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon out of the Earth, incinerate it for power, and then shunt the waste CO2 into the atmosphere, where it thickens the planet’s greenhouse layer, increasing the planet’s heat retention.
El Paso’s Decembers have grown 4.8°F hotter on average since 1970, Climate Central reports. And Amarillo’s have grown 5.2°F hotter in the same time period.
Here’s how other Texas cities have hottened up since 1970:
