GoKawiilSnow surveys taking place across the American west this week are offering a grim prognosis, after a historically warm winter and searing March temperatures left the critical snowpack at record-low levels across the region.
Experts warned that even as the heat begins to subside, the stunning pace of melt-off over the past month has left key basins in uncharted territory for the dry seasons ahead. Though there’s still potential for more snow in the forecast, experts said it will probably be too little too late.
“This year is on a whole other level,” said Dr Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist, speaking about the intense heat that began rapidly melting the already sparse snowpack in March. “Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning.”
Acting as a water savings account of sorts, snowpacks are essential to water supply. Measurements taken across the west during the week of 1 April are viewed as important indicators of the peak amounts of water that might melt into reservoirs, rivers and streams and across thirsty landscapes through the summer.
View image in fullscreen Andy Reising, Jim Shannon and Jacob Kollen found a zero measurement of snow during the California department of water resources snow survey at Phillips Station on Wednesday, 1 April 2026. This is the second lowest since 2015 during snow survey at the Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. Photograph: Paul Kitagaki Jr/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
During a critical survey in California’s Sierra Nevada on Wednesday, grass and mud could be seen through the thin white patchwork as state officials attempted to measure the meager snowpack.
“Normally we’d be standing right here,” Andy Reising, manager of California department of water resource’s snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit said, gesturing at chin height. The 5ft-tall tool typically thrust deep into the high berms on 1 April poked into the brown earth next to him. “There is actually no measurable snow.”
With zero depth and zero water content, this year’s annual April snow survey conducted at Phillips Station, was the second worst on record, beaten only by 2015 when officials “walked across a dry field”, Reising said.
It’s not just the amount of snow left on mountaintops that’s concerning experts, but the amount of moisture still frozen within them. “Snow water equivalent” (SWE), a measurement of what could melt off to supply natural and manmade systems, is exceptionally low.
California’s Sierra Nevada had just 4.9in of SWE, or 18% of average on Wednesday, according to the state’s department of water resources.
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