West snowpack worries

Washington has put every watershed in the state under a drought emergency after an unusually warm winter left the mountains with about half their normal snowpack. (ecology.wa.gov) The Washington Department of Ecology issued the declaration on April 8, 2026, saying projected water supplies for April through September are likely to fall well below summer demand. State law treats drought as a water-supply problem: officials can declare it when supply is expected to drop below 75 percent of average and hardship is likely. (ecology.wa.gov 1) (ecology.wa.gov 2) The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service said Washington’s statewide snow water equivalent on April 1 was 52 percent of normal, with 14 monitoring sites at record lows and 9 at their second-lowest levels. In Okanogan County, the Lost Lake snow course measured 0 percent of normal snow water equivalent on April 1. (nrcs.usda.gov 1) (nrcs.usda.gov 2) Snowpack works like a mountain reservoir: snow stores winter moisture and releases it slowly into streams in summer. Ecology said Washington got 104 percent of normal precipitation from October through February, but too much of it fell as rain instead of snow. (ecology.wa.gov) (nrcs.usda.gov) That shift points to a dry-season problem, not a simple lack-of-rain problem. Ecology said lower summer streamflows, warmer water for fish, irrigation cutbacks and higher wildfire risk are all expected risks from the weak snowpack and early melt. (ecology.wa.gov) For Pacific Crest Trail hikers, the concern is water and fire at the same time. The Pacific Crest Trail Association’s water report says many water conditions are tracked by recent user observations, and its closures page says drought can intensify fire restrictions and wildfire-related closures along the trail. (pcta.org) (closures.pcta.org) The picture across the inland Northwest is uneven rather than uniform. In northwest Montana, the Flathead Beacon reported that a mid-March storm dropped up to 10 inches of snow-stored water at high elevations, but warm temperatures still pushed runoff early and left April-through-July streamflow forecasts at 75 percent to 90 percent of normal in the Flathead and Kootenai basins. (flatheadbeacon.com) Northwest Montana also just came through its warmest winter in decades in some locations. The Daily Inter Lake reported that West Glacier finished the 2025-26 winter 6.6 degrees above normal, while the Coeur d’Alene Press said warm temperatures, an atmospheric river and a windstorm disrupted logging roads and winter hauling for the timber industry. (dailyinterlake.com) (cdapress.com) Late storms can still create short-term travel problems without fully repairing the seasonal water outlook. NBC Montana reported on April 14 that snow was expected mainly at pass level and higher, with winter storm watches and advisories for Wednesday and Thursday, and the National Weather Service in Missoula posted advisories calling for 1 to 3 inches of snow in some lower areas and 3 to 7 inches above 7,000 feet. (nbcmontana.com) (weather.gov) Washington officials say this is the state’s fourth consecutive drought declaration and the fourth statewide drought emergency since 2015. Ecology is making up to $3 million in drought emergency response grants available to eligible public entities as the snow season closes and the summer water season begins. (ecology.wa.gov) (doh.wa.gov)