West's snowpack sinks
The U.S. West just recorded one of its worst snowpack winters on record, and that low snow this spring is sharply increasing drought stress and wildfire risk across the region. (npr.org) Forecasters now show nearly the entire Western U.S. facing above‑normal wildfire risk over the next four months — and Washington already declared a statewide drought emergency after its snowpack fell roughly in half. (gizmodo.com) (mynorthwest.com)
Washington just declared a statewide drought emergency on April 8 after an “exceptionally warm winter” left the state with about half of its usual snowpack, even though precipitation from October through February was 104% of normal. A lot of the water showed up as rain instead of mountain snow, which means it ran off fast instead of being stored for summer. (ecology.wa.gov) That same pattern now stretches across much of the West. The National Interagency Fire Center’s April outlook shows above-normal significant fire potential expanding across the region over the next four months, with much of the West in the risk zone by early summer. (nifc.gov) Snowpack is the West’s mountain reservoir. The federal Snow Telemetry network measures “snow water equivalent,” which is the amount of liquid water sitting in the snow, and that number tells water managers how much runoff rivers and reservoirs can expect later. (drought.gov) This winter, the problem was not always missing storms. The United States Forest Service says many places had near-normal snowfall early in November and December, but warm and dry conditions in January plus rain falling on existing snow in February melted much of it away. (research.fs.usda.gov) Scientists have a name for that: a warm snow drought. It means precipitation arrives, but temperatures are too high for snow to build and stay put, so mountains that should act like a slow-release water tower start behaving more like wet pavement. (research.fs.usda.gov) The timing made it worse. In Washington, the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group said snowpack usually peaks in early April, but a mid-March warm event and rapid melt likely pushed the peak about two weeks early, leaving many basins between 35% and 60% of median by April 1. (climate.uw.edu) Heat kept piling on after winter. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said March 2026 averaged 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit across the contiguous United States, which was 9.35 degrees above the 20th-century average and the first month on record to clear that threshold. (ncei.noaa.gov) Low snow changes summer in two ways at once. Rivers run lower because there is less meltwater, and grasses, brush, and forests dry out earlier because the ground loses its steady drip of cold moisture sooner. (ecology.wa.gov) (research.fs.usda.gov) That is why water shortages and wildfire risk keep showing up in the same sentence. Washington’s drought order specifically warns of reduced irrigation, low streamflows, warmer water for fish, and higher wildfire danger from early melt-off. (ecology.wa.gov) The bigger shift is that this is no longer a one-state problem or a one-bad-month problem. The Forest Service says Oregon, Colorado, and Utah had their lowest snowpack levels on record by February 1 since continuous snow data collection began in the early 1980s, and Washington says this is its fourth statewide drought emergency since 2015. (research.fs.usda.gov) (ecology.wa.gov) So the story is not just that the West got less snow. The story is that the mountains are losing their ability to hold winter water until July and August, and when that storage fails, farms, fish, reservoirs, and fire crews all feel it at the same time. (drought.gov) (nifc.gov)
