Warm winter liquidates nearly half of Washington state snowpack

The Pacific Northwest’s snowpack is in some of its worst shape ever.

Washington state’s all-important wintry blanket held just 52% of its normal volume of water on Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

In Oregon, the snowpack was just 27% of normal.

Washington’s snowpack is at its third-lowest level for early February since statewide snow monitoring began in 1985, according to deputy state climatologist Karin Bumbaco.

“It's looking really bleak,” Bumbaco said.

The critical resource for salmon, irrigation, hydropower, and soil moisture—key to avoiding extreme wildfires— has taken a hit following the warmest December in more than a century of record keeping.

December and January are usually the main snowpack-building months in Washington state.

By early February, winter is far enough along that it would take a “miracle” amount of snow to dig the state out of its low-snow rut.

“Even if we get normal snowpack for the rest of the season, for most basins in Washington, we will still end up below 75% of median by April 1,” Bumbaco said.

The beginning of April is typically when the state’s snowpack reaches its peak and begins its long, slow melt to feed waterways through the Northwest’s dry summer months.

“Of course, there's always a chance, we could have some ‘miracle March,’" she said. “I don't see that on the horizon.”

Bumbaco said the long-term forecast was for a continued dry pattern for the next two weeks.

December’s “atmospheric river” storms brought intense precipitation and catastrophic flooding to the Northwest, but almost all the water came in warm, liquid form. The rain, originating in the subtropics near Hawaii, ate away at the Northwest’s nascent snowpack rather than adding to it.

Up in the mountains, it has simply been too warm for much snow to accumulate. October through December 2025 were the warmest such three-month period on record for Washington.

With the global climate changing rapidly due to fossil fuel pollution, scientists say we should expect more warm winters like this one.

“Dry January” lived up to its name in much of the Puget Sound lowlands. Seattle got 74% of its normal precipitation for the month, while Olympia got 55%, according to the National Weather Service.

“The dry January has been canceling out the really wet December,” Bumbaco said.

By February, many ski areas were on reduced operations, while farmers worried about the impacts this summer.

By this summer, barring a miraculous turnaround, the missing snowpack could result in water shortages for irrigation and salmon and dried-out forests prone to wildfires.

'We're way behind on snow'

“It's terrible right now. We're way behind on snow,” said Scott Revell with the Roza Irrigation District in the Yakima Valley. “We're behind 2015, with some of the lowest snowpack on record.”

Roza Irrigation District farmers grow $1.3 billion in crops annually, mostly high-value items like apples, cherries, hops, and grapes, with melting mountain snow as the dominant water supply.

The Upper Yakima basin, with snowpack at 36% of normal on Thursday, is going into its fourth year in a row of snow drought.

Revell said farmers in the district have done almost everything they can to grow their crops with as little water as possible.

Severe drought in 2015 caused $77 million in crop losses in the Roza district, according to Revell. Since then, the district’s farmers have replaced sprinklers with much more efficient drip irrigation systems on 10,000 acres of farmland.

The Roza district now has 300 of its 450 miles of canals encased in pipes to reduce evaporation losses.

"All of us, we've gone completely to drip irrigation," Jim Willard, who grows wine grapes and Red Delicious apples on his farm north of Prosser in the Yakima Valley. "No water leaves my place, period."

Willard said he might have to take more drastic measures, as he has for the past two summers.

“Two years ago, I started fallowing some more wine grapes," Willard said. "This last year, I told my irrigators, 'That five-acre block of Malbec over there, no more water on it this year.’ We just let it dry up.”

Willard said he was able to use water that would have gone to the Malbec grapes to keep producing other, more profitable crops.

Grape vines don’t necessarily die with one summer of not getting watered, but they can take several years to become productive again.

Many Roza farms fallowed one-fourth of their irrigated acreage in 2025, according to Revell, leaving them either unwatered or with just enough water to keep plants alive for the following season.

Revell said the prolonged drought is hitting farmers as they are already struggling economically, with commodity prices of the crops they sell not keeping up with their increasing costs to grow those crops.

The struggles of old man winter

“Old Man Winter has been riding the Struggle Bus this season,” The Summit at Snoqualmie’s snow report for Tuesday stated. Just six of the resort’s 19 ski lifts were in operation on Thursday.

“Coverage is still thin on the mountain,” the resort warned any diehard skiers or snowboarders. “Always look ahead, moderate your speed, and watch for marked and unmarked hazards, including abrupt depressions and openings in the snowpack.”

“The steeps are now closed as we await new snow,” the White Pass resort, south of Mount Rainier, reported.

The Methow Trails organization canceled its Feb. 7 Ski to the Sun cross-country ski race in Winthrop.

The Mount Baker Ski Area is currently dealing with a double whammy of weather impacts. Low snow forced the resort to cancel its annual Legendary Banked Slalom snowboard race scheduled for Feb. 6-8. All week, the ski area is closed while the Washington Department of Transportation does emergency repairs to Highway 542, which was washed away in several spots by floodwaters following extreme rainfall in December.

In an email, spokesperson Travis Gershaneck said Seattle Public Utilities was monitoring snowpack conditions in the central Cascades watersheds above its reservoirs, which provide Seattle’s drinking water. He said the reservoirs were filled slightly above average for this time of year, while snowpack around them was below normal.

Statewide, only the uppermost Columbia River basin showed near-normal snowpack as of Feb. 5.