Megan Jones, a meteorologist and Climate Services lead with the National Weather Services in Bismarck, said this variability is mostly due to the effects of the El Nina climate pattern on local weather.

Jones described El Nina as the cold phase dueling with the climate pattern El Nino southern oscillation. Jones said climate forecasters look at the sea surface temperatures in a specific area of the Pacific Ocean, which drives air circulation across the Pacific and influences the weather systems in North America.

Jones said these climate features and circulations play into each other, causing a variety of outcomes in different parts of the country.

“In the climate world, there’s all these different climate features and big circulations and they all play into each other and do different things to different areas, depending on what phase they’re in. People are always like, ‘It’s the Pacific Ocean and we’re in North Dakota,’ which is a fair question,” Jones said. “Typically when we’re in this La Nina phase we have a block of high pressure in the Pacific Ocean that makes the polar jetstream really variable. It arcs up into Alaska and then back down into the continental United States, which makes much easier for colder air from the Arctic and Canada to filter in, especially in the north central part of the country.”

Generated by Esri ArcMap 2004

Jones said the recent variable temperatures the region has experienced are mostly due to the La Nina conditions, which she said has developed more slowly than expected. Jones said North Dakota’s winter season could continue to see variability like this, but more than likely will settle into colder than normal temperatures.

While the rest of the country has been caught in the throes of Polar Vortex at the beginning of 2025, Jones said the effects of the phenomenon on North Dakota has been relatively fleeting due to the state’s landlocked nature.

“We’re not really thinking the Polar Vortex has been causing these cold air outbreaks. This time of the winter in North Dakota it’s just pretty common for us to get these cold arctic high pressures dropping down, but we haven’t gotten stuck in these patterns,” Jones said. “We bottom out our temperatures and rebound. The pattern has been pretty amplified, where stuff comes and goes really quickly. It’s hard to get used to any one thing because it gets so cold, and then it warms up, and then gets cold again.”

Jones is hopeful temperatures will stabilize on the back half of winter and observed that the northern areas of the state are seeing more snowfall than the southern areas. But she also was hopeful spring snow storm activity could boost the snowpack and alleviate drought conditions in parts of the state. Jones said there won’t be much activity in the drought monitor until the spring melt occurs, but drought conditions are expected to continue into the spring and summer.

“We went into the winter with really dry conditions across western and parts of southern North Dakota. We’re pretty dependent on what we get in the winter to get a jumpstart for the spring and the summer. Otherwise, it can deteriorate really quickly. In the fall, it was really dry out west,” Jones said.