Winter has hardly looked like a normal winter across large parts of the western U.S. Normally, the mountains hold deep snow by midseason, but they’ve been unusually bare this year, and the snow that did fall didn’t last for very long. It’s actually become something that has broken records, according to federal climate agencies. Yes, snow coverage across the West has fallen to levels that modern records, dating back to the early 1980s, have never seen before.
The issue also goes beyond the mountains. In the western U.S., the snow acts similarly to a giant water bank, although it releases water far more slowly. A lack of snow in the winter means that there’s less stored water for spring & summer, and the currently low levels of snow are what climatologists refer to as a “snow drought.” Essentially, it’s when snowpack falls below what is expected at a certain time of the year.
Research by Alexander R. Gottlieb & Justin S. Mankin, published in the American Meteorological Society, found that snow drought involves missing water more than missing flakes. In fact, snow droughts, like the one currently happening in the West, can occur even in years that aren’t especially dry. The moisture still arrives, yet it falls as rain instead of snow, which is rather important since rain runs off quickly. Snow stays around. Really, all snow droughts require is temperatures staying warm enough to prevent snow from building up.
So what records has the recent snow drought broken? According to data from NOAA, at least 67 weather stations in the West experienced their warmest seasonal period on record from December to early February. NOAA research also found that over 8,500 daily high temperature records were broken or tied across the West since December 1st. Such high temperatures have caused the snow to melt before it could properly accumulate.
It’s something that scientists at the National Snow & Ice Data Center have been tracking. There is usually around 460,000 square miles of snow in the West at this point in winter. But in 2026, coverage fell to 155,000 square miles.
One of the worst-affected regions is Oregon. Not only is snowpack across the state at a record low, but it’s significantly lower than the previous record, at an approximate 30% reduction. The previous record was something already considered extreme.
Likewise, in Utah, the National Weather Service reported that Salt Lake City’s airport went 327 days without receiving a single inch of snow. It’s the longest snowless stretch since records began during the late 1800s.
A major reason the lack of snow matters so much comes from a study in Geophysical Research Letters. It found that over half of all runoff in the western United States starts as snowmelt, despite the fact that snowfall only makes up a small proportion of total precipitation. Such a balance makes snowpack rather valuable.
Different research by Timothy Barnett & colleagues found that warmer winters tend to cause runoff to happen earlier. Yes, water arrives sooner. But it doesn’t come when the demand for it is at its highest, and that’s quite a problem.
Large parts of the West rely on the snow melting slowly. This includes places like the Colorado River, where months of gradual runoff from mountain snow replenish water levels. The Upper Colorado River Basin, in particular, supplies water to tens of millions of people across several states. They rely on predictable spring & summer flows. Unfortunately, lower levels of snowpack could lead to serious disasters in these areas.
Snow melting early, or never forming at all, causes the land to dry out sooner. Wildfire experts are currently carefully watching the snow drought conditions due to fears that the vegetation growing there will be exposed to warm & dry air for longer.
But that’s not all. Anthony Westerling published a paper through the U.S. Forest Service that found that earlier spring snowmelt was closely associated with an increase in large wildfires across the western U.S. Warmer conditions & longer dry seasons cause a knock-on effect for forest fire activity.
Even if these wildfires later in the year don’t actually happen, one thing’s pretty clear. The snow in the western U.S. is melting at a far greater rate than most Americans are able to deal with.
