A major winter storm buried parts of the East Coast under 8 to 14 inches of snow on February 22 and 23, 2026, while much of the American West continued to suffer through a punishing snow drought, with snow water equivalent running below 50% of average in many areas. These split-screen extremes are not random. They trace back to a pair of large-scale atmospheric patterns, La Niña and a persistently negative Arctic Oscillation, that have locked the country into a lopsided weather regime since mid-January and show no sign of releasing their grip as February ends.
East Coast Storms Intensify With Explosive Speed
The late-February storm that hit Virginia through New England was no ordinary nor’easter. The Wakefield forecast office of the National Weather Service documented coastal cyclogenesis and rapid deepening as the system tracked up the seaboard, producing snow rates that briefly reached 2 to 3 inches per hour. Snowfall totals of 8 to 14 inches piled up across specific zones of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England, driven by a tight pressure gradient that also generated strong wind gusts and localized whiteout conditions along key transportation corridors.
Days later, a second system followed a similar explosive trajectory. Rapid pressure falls of that magnitude are a hallmark of what meteorologists call bombogenesis. That kind of rapid deepening supercharges a storm’s wind field and precipitation output, which is why cities across the eastern U.S. closed schools and canceled flights in quick succession. The back-to-back hits suggest this is not a one-off event but a pattern linked to the broader winter setup, with the atmosphere repeatedly reloading the same storm track over the western Atlantic and funneling energy into coastal systems that spin up with unusual speed.
La Niña and the Arctic Oscillation Are Driving the Divide
Two climate-scale drivers explain why the eastern U.S. keeps getting hammered while the West stays dry and warm. In its February 12 update, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center maintained a La Niña Advisory, noting that cool anomalies in the tropical Pacific are influencing the jet stream. La Niña tends to displace the Pacific storm track and favor more frequent systems across the southern and eastern United States, while leaving large parts of the West drier than normal. This winter, that textbook signature has played out with unusual consistency, with repeated troughs digging into the East and a stubborn ridge keeping much of the West comparatively mild.
Compounding the La Niña signal is a long-duration negative Arctic Oscillation event that has persisted into February, as highlighted in the Climate Prediction Center’s seasonal outlooks. A negative AO weakens the polar vortex and allows Arctic air to spill southward east of the Rockies, setting up repeated cold surges that prime the atmosphere for intense cyclogenesis along the coast. A pattern reflecting both of these forces settled into place around the middle of January and, as national coverage has emphasized, has not budged since. The combination is what makes this winter feel so extreme on both sides of the continental divide: too much snow and cold in the East, almost none of either in the West.
Western Snow Drought Threatens Spring Water Supply
While eastern cities dig out from repeated storms, the West faces the opposite crisis. On December 7, 2025, satellite imagery from MODIS recorded the lowest Western snow cover for that date since 2001, according to Drought.gov. January offered little relief. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information reported that national precipitation for the month came in at just 1.53 inches, ranking as the 11th-driest January on record for the contiguous United States. Multiple Western states logged record-warm temperatures through early winter, further reducing whatever snowpack managed to accumulate at higher elevations and leaving many ski areas reliant on artificial snow.
The practical consequences are significant for water managers from the Cascades to the Rockies. Snow water equivalent, the metric used to estimate how much runoff will feed rivers and reservoirs in spring, is running below 50% of average in many areas, according to the Climate Prediction Center’s U.S. hazards outlook issued on February 14, 2026. That same outlook flagged a moderate risk of heavy precipitation in northern California, southern Oregon, and the broader Pacific Northwest during the final week of February. Late-season rain, rather than snow, falling on already thin snowpack and saturated lower-elevation soils raises the risk of flooding and rapid runoff without meaningfully rebuilding the deep mountain snowpack that irrigators, hydropower operators, and municipal systems depend on through the dry season.
A Wavier Jet Stream and the Cost of Doing Nothing
The persistence of these extremes raises a question that goes beyond any single La Niña or AO episode: whether the jet stream itself is behaving differently as the climate warms. A 2025 peer-reviewed study found that a more amplified polar jet helped drive historical winter temperature anomalies in North America, with slower-moving ridges and troughs locking in regional cold spells and heat waves. While scientists continue to debate the precise links between Arctic change and midlatitude circulation, the current winter’s entrenched pattern—deep cold and storminess in the East, warmth and dryness in the West—fits the broader picture of a wavier, more persistent jet that can sustain sharp gradients for weeks at a time.
That kind of atmospheric “stuckness” has real costs. Eastern states are spending heavily on snow removal, emergency shelter, and infrastructure repairs, while Western communities brace for the possibility of another lean runoff year that could stress reservoirs and ecosystems already strained by past droughts. The juxtaposition underscores that climate risk is not just about averages nudging warmer or drier, but about amplified swings and longer-lived extremes. As research accumulates on how background warming interacts with natural modes like La Niña and the AO, the winter of 2025–26 offers a case study in what happens when multiple drivers line up to push the jet stream into an unbalanced configuration.
Forecasting, Aviation, and the Digital Weather Infrastructure
Managing these hazards depends on a forecasting enterprise that can translate complex atmospheric patterns into timely, actionable guidance. The National Weather Service, whose organizational structure spans local forecast offices, national centers, and specialized units, has been at the center of this winter’s response, issuing blizzard warnings in the East and drought and flood outlooks in the West. As an agency within the Department of Commerce, it operates under the broader economic and public-safety mission outlined by the Commerce Department, which frames weather and climate information as foundational to transportation, agriculture, and energy planning.
The digital backbone of this system has become increasingly visible during high-impact events. Real-time radar mosaics, model guidance, and forecast graphics are distributed through platforms such as NOAA’s digital services, allowing broadcasters, emergency managers, and the public to track evolving storms and drought indicators in detail. In the aviation sector, where winter storms and jet stream shifts can disrupt routes and schedules across entire regions, specialized products from the aviation weather center help pilots and dispatchers navigate turbulence, icing, and low-visibility conditions. Together, these tools form a national weather infrastructure that is being tested by the current season’s extremes—and will be tested further as similar patterns recur in a warming world.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
