{"id":435826,"date":"2026-01-29T00:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T00:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/435826\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T00:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T00:38:09","slug":"snowpack-hits-record-lows-in-parts-of-the-western-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/435826\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowpack hits record lows in parts of the Western U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend\u2019s winter storm may have covered much of the country in a glut of snow and ice, but the season has not delivered out West, where several states face a snowpack drought.<\/a> <\/p>\n

In Colorado, the snowpack is \u201cthe lowest on record for this point in the season,\u201d said Peter Goble, the assistant state climatologist. \u201cAll of our mountain ranges are well below normal.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same story in Utah. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in uncharted territory right now, and we\u2019re headed toward the lowest snowpack we\u2019ve ever had on Feb. 1,\u201d said Kevin Perry, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist. <\/p>\n

Given those conditions, scientists are growing concerned about the water supply and a risk of wildfires later in the year. Because the mountain snowpack in Western states runs off as water throughout spring and summer, the levels influence how much water farmers can use to irrigate crops, how risky the wildfire season will be, and how much electricity hydropower dams can generate.<\/p>\n

Measurements of Western snowpack come from the National Resources Conservation Service, which collects data from more than 800 high-elevation monitoring stations<\/a> in the mountains. The service tracks how much water is in the snowpack at more than 80 basins in the Western continental United States, and its data shows that all but a handful are trending well below average. <\/p>\n

\"OnlyOnly a handful of basins in the Western U.S. are near average snowpack levels. Natural Resources Conservation Service<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s not unusual to have some basins lower than historical averages, it\u2019s rare to have nearly every region of the West facing snowfall deficits. <\/p>\n

In Washington state, a mid-January climb of Mount Saint Helens revealed conditions that felt more like June than midwinter, with large patches of volcanic rock exposed near the crater rim. <\/p>\n

The reasons for the snowpack drought vary by region, but across the West, temperatures have been uncommonly warm this winter, which has led more precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow. That was true when atmospheric river storms hammered the Pacific Northwest in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cWashington, Oregon, California and many Western states had their warmest December ever on record, and so the torrential rains that we had with the atmospheric river and the flooding and damage from too much water \u2014 none of that stayed in the mountains,\u201d said Philip Mote, a professor at Oregon State University\u2019s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. <\/p>\n

Then this month, the spigot of moisture largely shut off in the Northwest.<\/p>\n

In Utah, early season rainfall in November and December melted everything below about 9,000 feet of elevation, leaving the Wasatch mountains looking top heavy, according to Perry. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe high elevation snowpack is actually really good,\u201d Perry said. But \u201cwe just have no low elevation and very little mid-elevation snowpack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado has simply remained relatively hot and dry. <\/p>\n

\u201cDecember of 2025 was nine degrees warmer than average statewide, which was our warmest on record, going back to 1895,\u201d Goble said. <\/p>\n

The snowpack in California \u2014 known for its boom and bust water cycle<\/a> \u2014 is in better shape, particularly in the southern Sierras, where several basins have above-average accumulations. <\/p>\n

\"TahoeLake Tahoe on Dec. 29 in Glenbrook, Nev. Al Drago \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

But for the regions left wanting for snow, little relief is expected soon. <\/p>\n

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s Climate Prediction Center expects dry conditions for much of the West for the next two weeks<\/a>, with temperatures remaining above average for the next month<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mote said some areas west of the Cascade crest \u2014 which runs up the spine of Washington and Oregon \u2014 could recover if a few big storms come later this winter or in spring.<\/p>\n

But, he said, \u201cfor Eastern Washington and most of Idaho, the story\u2019s already kind of been written and it\u2019s just unlikely to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists have struggled to quantify the influence of climate change on snowpack, since warming is both raising temperatures and shifting patterns of precipitation. Trends in snowpack are also heavily influenced by natural variability. However, research published in 2024 in the journal Nature found that climate change was to blame for a declining trend in snowpack<\/a> across the Northern Hemisphere. <\/p>\n

Mote\u2019s work in the Western U.S.<\/a> shows dramatic declines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story just keeps getting clearer and sadder,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

If the low snowpack continues, it will add pressure to already tense negotiations between seven Western states over how to split up flows from the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to 40 million people. The river\u2019s flow has dwindled as a result of long-term drought and because its users collectively have rights to take more water each year than is actually available. <\/p>\n

The Bureau of Reclamation earlier this month released its draft of how to manage the water,<\/a> which supports 5.5 million acres of agriculture and hydropower operations in California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. <\/p>\n

The states are negotiating a long-term plan for how to manage the river\u2019s water and prevent dams at Lake Mead and Lake Powell from reaching \u201cdead pool<\/a>\u201d status, when flow would be cut off to lower regions of the river. But those negotiations have reportedly been at a standstill. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the short run, having a low snowpack year may raise the urgency of coming to some of those agreements,\u201d Goble said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last weekend\u2019s winter storm may have covered much of the country in a glut of snow and ice,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-435826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}