The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) describes “the cryosphere” as a global system that encompasses “all the snow, ice, and other frozen regions across the planet.” These frozen regions “provide fresh water and other ecosystem services to people, plants, and animals.” But as the climate grows increasingly unstable due to carbon-driven global heating, “the cryosphere is one of the most rapidly changing systems on Earth,” warns the NSIDC. Nowhere is this more evident than in the western United States this past winter, where the NSIDC’s Snow Today project is reporting record-low snow levels. “Snow cover was far below average in all western states during January,” reports Snow Today, with California at “72% of average snow cover,” Idaho at 49%, Washington at 38%, New Mexico at 35%, Colorado at 24%, Nevada and Utah at about 20%, Arizona at 16%, and Oregon at a measly 15%. This is significant because January is the month when snow-covered areas likely reached a maximum for the season, according to data from SNOTEL, a snow telemetry system of snowpack and related climate sensors operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Snow cover is important because it acts as a water “savings account,” reports the United States Geological Survey. The snow that falls at higher elevations “accumulates as snowpack” that then slowly melts over the spring and summer months to provide water to “lower elevation landscapes.” The water contained in snowpack is measured as snow water equivalent, which is currently “extremely low in Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and most of Utah and Colorado,” warns Snow Today. The result is a “snow drought,” which the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) describes as “a period when snowpack is abnormally low relative to the time of year and location,” leaving “scant snow reserves to supply water throughout the summer months.” This is especially bad news for the western United States, where snowmelt accounts for up to 70% of the region’s water supply.
“A snow drought, and its interactions with other disturbances, can cause a wide range of effects across resource areas,” writes Brandon McWilliams in his report titled “A warm winter in the West: Understanding the 2026 snow drought” for the USDA. “Some effects are felt immediately, while others may not appear until years later,” he says. In addition to water impacts, the snow drought will drive greater “competition for resources between livestock and wildlife,” writes McWilliams, and “prime the landscape for fires.” In his article titled “Snow Drought in the West Signals Urgent Need for Modernizing Water Management,” Maurice Hall asserts that “[t]his so-called ‘snow drought’ is exactly what climate and water scientists have been telling us to brace for: extreme swings in weather, and consequently far less certainty about our water supplies.”
This lack of certainty is most readily apparent in the region’s river basins. According to the NISDC, water levels in all major river basins in the western U.S. are well below average. Perhaps the most closely watched river basin is the Colorado, where “two-thirds of the river’s water is fed by mountain snow” and which has been “overdrawn for more than a century,” according to reporting by Gabrielle Canon in the Guardian. “Snaking across 1,450 miles … from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, the Colorado supplies [water to] roughly 40 million people in seven states,” she writes. Much of this water is stored in crucial reservoirs, like Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which “have already plummeted to historic lows, at 26% full and 34% full, respectively,” according to Hall. These lows are largely due to one simple fact: “The basin is fundamentally drier than when its waters were apportioned among the states more than a hundred years ago,” writes Hall.
Closer to home, the headwaters of the Rio Grande are currently flowing at a paltry “32% of average,” according to reporting by Alaina Mencinger in the Santa Fe New Mexican. This “dangerously low flow” will not deliver the necessary volumes to critical reservoirs, such as Elephant Butte, which is currently only 12% full. “If the tides don’t turn and low flows continue … some are warning the Middle Rio Grande—the roughly 120-mile stretch between Cochiti Lake and Elephant Butte Lake—might be in trouble,” reports Mencinger. Norm Gaume, president of New Mexico Water Advocates sums up the quandary of the Rio Grande succinctly: “Our straws into the aquifer and into the river are more than the resource could bear—considerably more, given that the resource is shrinking so much … with the loss of snowpack.” After nearly a quarter-century of declining precipitation in the region, “[w]e’ve lost our renewable water supply,” he warns. “Droughts end. This is not going to end.”
Visit nsidc.org to learn more.