textproduct: North Platte

KEY MESSAGES

- Critical fire weather conditions will continue as well above normal temperatures and gusty west winds persist through early Friday evening.

- Light wintry precipitation, largely in the form of snow, may accompany a cold front arriving tonight but little to no accumulations are expected with the remainder of the forecast dry.

- Following a cooler but still mild day Saturday, temperatures quickly return to well above normal values with record highs and near record highs forecast for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

SHORT TERM /THROUGH SATURDAY/

Issued at 323 PM CST Fri Dec 19 2025

This afternoon, satellite analysis depicts high level clouds streaming across the central and northern Rockies onto the High Plains. This was coincident with strong mid-level flow on the backside of stronger troughing across the Northeast. The plume of moisture aloft was responsible increased cloud cover. Even with the cloud cover limiting insolation, zonal mid-level flow was promoting strong downsloping flow which boosted afternoon highs to record levels. As of 2045z (245pm CST), temperatures ranged from the low 50s in far north central Nebraska to middle/upper 60s and even a 70F report here and there over the Sandhills and southwest Nebraska. North Platte Regional Airport has already broken a calendar day high temperature record (62F set in 2023/1979) with Valentine Miller Field within 2F of their respective record. Strong h7 flow was topping the mountains and moving down terrain into western Nebraska. This has led to a few gusts exceeding 40 mph and even fewer closer to 55-60 mph in the Nebraska Panhandle. The combination of the warmth and windy conditions will allow ongoing near-critical to critical fire weather conditions to persist through early this evening.

For tonight, westerly winds will linger into the evening but should diminish gradually to less than 25 mph by mid-evening. Even with loss of daytime heating, expect temperatures to fall fairly slow at first as westerly winds maintain some low-level mixing. This will allow for the evening to be fairly pleasant for December standards with temperatures holding in the middle 40s to low 50s in higher areas outside valleys. While this will keep humidity from recovering too quickly, do expect a quick arrival of 30%+ across the area. This played a large role in deciding again extending the ongoing Red Flag Warning headlines. Consideration was given to extend through Midnight CST or later to account for the arrival of a frontal boundary from the north but opted against this given marginal conditions preceding this. As mentioned, a front associated with a northern stream disturbance will arrive late tonight. This should flip winds to the north quickly with a slight increase in magnitudes during the overnight. Even with the stronger kinematics, increasing moisture from the invading airmass should support good humidity recovery and limit fire weather concerns quickly thereafter. Lows will fall into the upper 20s to lower 30s. Though moisture will be marginal, forecast soundings depict low-level saturation across our northwest and so have maintained and even expanding PoPs (20-30%) while introducing light icing in addition to snow. Soundings depict a lack of ice nuclei for a brief period and given low-level saturation, believe -FZDZ/fog will be possible. Even in worst case scenario, only isolated slick spots are possible and snow amounts should remain less than a half inch before activity ends closer to daybreak Saturday.

LONG TERM /SATURDAY NIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY/

Issued at 323 PM CST Fri Dec 19 2025

Overall a dry and very warm stretch of weather is expected heading into the Christmas holiday. Zonal flow is replaced by upper-riding across the Gulf Coast with amplified southwesterly flow across the Desert Southwest pointed to the central and northern High Plains. Ridge axis settles into the Great Plains around the middle of the week which will coincide with the warmest day of the forecast before increased troughing arrives onto the West Coast and allows for a modest ridge breakdown as a northern stream disturbance tracks west to east across southern Canada. All this to say, a relatively cooler day is expected Saturday before temperatures rebound considerably. As of now, forecast highs for Christmas Eve (Wed) and Christmas Day (Thu) are anticipated to break and threaten record values each day respectively. At the same time, scant low-level moisture availability with lack of greater forcing should allow the forecast to remain dry. Extended ensemble guidance, notably the EPS/GEFS solutions, paint only 10% or less probabilities for seeing > 0.01" any single day beyond Thursday through the weekend. Based on this, thinking is that post-holiday travel should largely be unhampered across most of the region.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 549 PM CST Fri Dec 19 2025

Low-level wind shear will continue this evening as westerly winds increase quickly just off the surface. Otherwise a cold front and wind shift to the north will bring an end to the wind shear concerns around midnight. VFR conditions should prevail all areas through Saturday. Surface wind from the west or southwest this evening will switch to the north overnight at 10-20 kts as the cold front passes.

LBF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

Red Flag Warning until 6 PM CST /5 PM MST/ this evening for NEZ204-206.