Brains
There is no question that this winter is off to a strange start. Arizona Snowbowl has received 57 inches of snow so far this season, ski resorts across the midwest stacked up over a foot of snow after Thanksgiving, and Jay Peak, Vermont broke a 25-year-old record, logging 100 inches of snowfall by Thanksgiving. Yet, across the western part of the country, the vast majority of ski areas remain closed, with snow and even cold temperatures for snowmaking remaining elusive.
Mountain snowpacks provide essential storage of water during the winter, then feed streams and rivers throughout the summer, providing a critical source of water for many ecosystems. Humans also rely on snow-fed water sources, so the Federal Government and around a dozen state governments keep an eye on snow levels with snow telemetry, aka snotel, sites. Some of the earliest sites were installed in the 1960s, and there are around 900 sites in operation today, many with records going back to the mid-1980s. These historical data allow a comparison of the start to this winter to the previous starts of other slower winters, to see just how bad things are, and what we might expect the rest of the season.
- Related: December 2025 State of the Western U.S. Snowpack: Well Below Average and Downright Abysmal in Places
California
Starting in the Sierra Nevada, a snotel site near Lake Tahoe gave a reading on December 1 of 2.1 inches of snow water equivalent. This measure reports how much liquid water is in the snowpack. Though many snotel sites also record snow depths, snow water equivalent can be a more useful metric when comparing wet concrete snow to blower pow. The distribution of snow water equivalents on December 1 from the last thirty or forty years is shown below. This season’s value of 2.1 seems to be on the very low side, with just a handful of other years logging 2 inches or less by December 1.
Snotel sites make measurements every day, or even every hour, allowing us to look back at how the early season snowpack developed in those other low-snow years. The plot below shows the snow water equivalent in the snowpack for the first few months of the season. The dashed line represents the average of all the years on record.
Perhaps the good news is that things seem to pick up in the Sierra by the first or second week in December. Some of the multi-day monster storms the Sierra Nevada are famous for can be seen for a few of the years coming in around mid-December. To see if these monster storms make up for the slow start, or if a bad start results in a bad season overall, we can look at how the snowpack developed throughout the entire season. This longer timeframe is shown below for those same years with starts just as bad as this one.
The most remarkable feature of the plot above is that there are a couple of years that wind up being above average. A few more years wind up right at the average dashed line. So, don’t hang up your skis yet. There may be hope.
Utah
Moving east to Utah, things look a bit more dire. Looking at data for the Central Wasatch, this is the worst start to the season since at least 1989, when the station began recording data. The plot below shows traces for the next few worst seasons, and none of them make it to the average dashed line. Interestingly, the worst season on record for peak snow water equivalent, shown as the lower dotted line, had a relatively strong start in November, but then the snow pretty much disappeared until mid-February.
Colorado
Continuing east in Colorado, the Rabbit Ears Pass snotel site shows a similar story to California and Utah. Even just a few small early season snow storms result in a few inches of snow water equivalent, but those storms have not materialized yet. Looking at some of the other dry November and December years, there is a little hope to be found, only if it is in uncertainty. A few of these years wound up exceeding the average snowpack by quite a bit, with steady storms throughout February and March. A handful of the other years were slightly below average, largely due to dry periods in January, and one year recorded the lowest peak snow water equivalent. So, though a slow start to the season can be frustrating, it is not all that predictive of how much snow will fall throughout the rest of the season. We might have cause to forget all about the slow start to this season in just a couple of weeks.
No Snow = No Snowmaking
This season has brought a double whammy of very little precipitation and warm temperatures. While many ski areas have developed sophisticated snowmaking systems, cold temperatures are still needed to use these systems to get terrain open. Warm temperatures across the Western U.S. have forced ski areas to be patient and wait for winter to develop further. If it’s not cold enough to snow it’s not cold enough to make snow. However, weather models are beginning to show some consensus that low pressure systems may begin moving into the Western U.S. next week, pushing out the ridge that has been keeping us warm and dry. In the meantime, keep an eye on plane ticket prices to Vermont.
More From Zach Armstrong:
- The Supreme Court Changed the National Environmental Protection Act. Here’s What It Means For The Ski Industry
- Trump’s Plan to Allow Drilling for Oil in the Arctic is Met With Limited Interest
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- Trump Approves 211-Mile Mining Road Through Gates Of The Arctic National Park
- History with SnowBrains: The Incredible Notes from a Swiss Avalanche Researcher’s Travels to Western USA in 1949
- Sierra Nevada Resiliency Team Enters Second Season Supporting Ski Patroller Mental Health Across California and Nevada
