Wisconsin is warming, getting wetter and seeing bigger swings between deluge and drought, according to a 2026 state climate report presented Wednesday to the Natural Resources Board. State climatologist Steve Vavrus and Sean Kennedy said the findings show the changes are already here, not a distant warning.
The numbers are stark. Average temperatures in Wisconsin have climbed about 3 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s, the last two decades were the warmest on record, and annual precipitation has risen 17 percent. Vavrus said Wisconsin is already on pace to record its warmest decade through the first six years of the 2020s, after 2024 became the warmest year in state history.
The report links that warming to the kind of flooding and storm damage that has already cut into Wisconsin communities and budgets. Between 1980 and 2024, the state was hit by 63 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in losses. In the 2010s, Wisconsin saw more than 20 daily rainfalls that met the threshold for a 100-year storm, meaning a 1 percent chance in any given year. The state is also seeing an increased likelihood of daily rainfalls of 2 inches or more.
Milwaukee offered the clearest warning last August, when storms dumped more than 14 inches of rain in 24 hours and set a new city record. That flooding prompted nearly $207 million in federal aid to individuals and households. Kennedy said decades of flood and storm water work by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and its partners helped prevent an even worse outcome, but the event still showed how quickly the losses can mount when extreme rain hits a built-up area.
The broader forecast is not any calmer. WICCI projects wetter winters and springs by mid-century, with March effectively shifting from winter to spring in Wisconsin. The report also points to the record-warm winter of 2023-24 as an example of winter extremes becoming more common, while mid-century projections show warmer nights and a jump in extremely hot days from an average of about 10 to roughly 30 a year.
That leaves Wisconsin headed into a future defined less by one kind of weather than by sudden reversals. Vavrus described it as “precipitation ping-pong,” and the label fits the report’s central warning: residents should expect faster shifts between very wet and very dry conditions, with more heat and heavier storms layered on top. For a state already seeing climate impacts add up, the question is no longer whether the pattern has changed. The report says it already has.