2025: Year Without a Winter in the Western US

[Boris Konon]

For a great overview of current drought conditions, including some crazy stats (95% of stations in Colorado are in snow drought), see a recent Drought.gov article posted on February 5th:
Snow Drought Current Conditions and Impacts in the West | February 5, 2026 | Drought.gov

For a TLDR of everything I'm about to say, please see this excellent post by the Colorado Climate Center: How does this year compare to the snow droughts of the past? - Colorado Climate Blog

2025-2026 Winter Comparison With History
I mentioned in my first post on this thread that the period of record used to generate most of the scary graphs above only stretches back to 1987. When talking about climatology, this isn't a very long period of record, and also has the affect of possibly making this year look worse than it actually is. I've mentioned that we're experiencing "record" low snowpack, but of course the period of record (POR) for SNOTEL automated snow observations is only 39 years long.

I've seen a number of comparisons recently between this winter and the huge, historically significant winter droughts of 1976-1977 and 1980-1981. Those years fall just outside of the POR for most SNOTEL stations, and so they don't show up on the statewide SNOTEL graphs seen above. So, I'd like to examine how comparable our current winter is to those dry winters of old.

There weren't any SNOTEL stations in Colorado for the winter of 76-77, but a few locations had them for the winter of 80-81. Using data from these individual stations, we can see that at most stations the current snowpack is actually a lot better than in 1980-1981, which was probably the worst snow year in modern history. Vail Mountain is an exception, and at that location this winter is currently worse than 1980-1981.
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I guess this is good news in that the current conditions aren't really unprecedented, and that similar scenarios have played out in the past. However, I think it's noteworthy that Lake Mead and Powell weren't completely drained before the winters of 76-77 and 80-81, so they were able to absorb the hit from low runoff. We're not in a similar position today, and the reservoirs are both already near the level at which power generation becomes much less efficient or stops entirely, and inputs from snowmelt aren't expected to be particularly large this summer.

The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center puts out monthly presentations examining the snowpack situation and predicting runoff. Their most recent presentation, from February, can be found at the following link: https://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/present/2026/cbrfcwsupfeb2026.pdf
It's pretty grim, and we might be in serious trouble this summer if things don't change.


Snow Course Markers
I recently discovered (through the Colorado Climate Center) that there's a network of manual snow observation sites across the Rockies that has been operational since the 1930s. Observations of snow water equivalent and snow depth are taken once monthly in February, March, April, and May. In select locations this network has a 90+ year record of mountain snowpack, and more broadly it spans 50-80 years, giving us a much more complete picture of historical snowpack than the recently introduced SNOTEL stations.

So, how does this winter stack up to other dry winters over the past 90 years? At almost all snow course stations in Colorado, the lowest SWE values in a 50-90 year history were recorded during the winter of 1980-1981, followed closely by the winter of 1976-1977. A few locations across southern CO have all-time low records during 2000 or 2017. Only a few stations have recorded their lowest SWE for February in 2026.
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The picture is a little different in other areas. In New Mexico and Arizona, there are a number of "worst years" at each site, probably because values of 0 were recorded multiple times.
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To the north, it appears that 1976-1977 was particularly bad, followed by 2023-2024 in some areas.
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You can check out this data for yourself at the following link: NWCC iMap


The takeaway from all of this?
This year is definitely bad, but similar snow droughts have occurred in the past. However, the dry winters of 1976-1977 and 1980-1981 were sandwiched between a number of wet years. Reservoir storage was at acceptable levels before these dry winters happened, allowing their negative effects to be mitigated. We don't have that luxury this year, as reservoirs west-wide are already nearing record low conditions.

In the following graph, note the greatly reduced frequency of wet periods after 2000, and the increasing consistency of droughts. (Graph from NCEI's Climate at a Glance Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI))
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In comparison to 1977 and 1981, I believe that this winter's snow drought impacts will be made much worse by the fact that the west is already experiencing drought conditions, and essentially has been for 25 years.

Additionally, it's very interesting to note that all of this is not a consequence of low precipitation. This winter has been marked by above-normal precipitation mostly everywhere (see my first post on this thread) but incredibly warm temperatures. Some may argue that this is the mark of climate change. The snow drought this year has been caused by anomalous ridging (weather) and not necessarily climate, but you really can't help but think that global warming has at least tacked a few degrees onto the existing highs. Going forward, it seems that years like this may become more of the norm...

Interesting you mention 1976-77 as being a snow drought. Well, that winter was absolutely epic for cold and snow in the eastern U.S.
See here:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/106/10/1520-0493_1978_106_1393_twitcu_2_0_co_2.xml

https://nwafiles.nwas.org/file/nwafiles/digest/papers/1977/Vol02No4/1977v002no04-Wagner.pdf

January 1977 was possibly the coldest month experienced in the eastern half of the country in the past 200 years. You had departures as low as -19 F for the month in central Appalachia. So is it any surprise the West lacked snow?

If something like the above occurred today, it would be blamed on climate change. Absolute high-end extremes at or above anything in recent decades have occurred when the globe was cooler. So how does that work really? If the same sensible wx (extremes and everything else) occur in cooler mean temps and lower CO2, and higher mean temps and higher CO2, well, see the issue here? Wild extremes and anomalies happen regardless of global temps or CO2 levels. Yes, there some variance, but there are numerous other natural external and internal factors impacting climate system over time that result in variance, and this can drown out defined signals solely based on CO2 levels, such as solar activity (e.g. Maunder Minimums) an Milankovitch cycles (changes in the Earth's eccentricity, obliquity, and precession). Items such as these dominiate, not CO2 levels. Don't get me wrong, CO2 level are a factors, but just b/c something is a factor, does not mean it is significant (statisically or otherwise), doom going to happen, or counterintutitive sensible wx impacts can not occur.

 

[Ethan Schisler]

This winter has been much better than the 2024-2025 winter in my area concerning snowfall. Last winter we barely scraped up 9" of snow for the whole season. This winter we are sitting at 25.6" total since the first snow in November.

Our biggest snow of the season came on November 29th when we picked up 9.3" of snow. December 13th was our second largest snowfall at 6.1", and then in January it only snowed once...typically our snowiest month. January 2026 only brought 2.4 inches of the white stuff to my location. By the looks of things, we will go all of February without any snow, which is the first time in a while I can remember that happening.

In late January we had 12 straight days of below freezing temperatures, being the first time since 2021-22 that has happened in our local area (Central/Western Illinois). Even with snowfall being close to average or slightly above, I would consider this winter to be fairly mild compared to the winters I'm used to growing up as a kid. Most of the snow events were far and few between. While way before my time, those winters in the 1970s are the benchmark for an epic winter still to this date across most of this region.

 

[Harlan U]

Meteorological winter is over, and the NCEI's official data for the winter was just released today. I'll be taking a look at temperatures this time instead of snowpack since that has already been discussed in detail.

Winter Rankings
Looking at the 3-month DJF winter period as a whole, there are some incredible stats. For most of the West, and even some surrounding areas, it was hands down the warmest winter on record. In comparison, the unusual cold the East has been experiencing this winter was not particularly notable compared to the historical period, and this winter wasn't even in the top 30 coldest for most northeastern states.
Some 1/3 of the country's land mass experienced its warmest winter (rank 131) on record, with additional areas seeing their 2nd warmest winter (rank 130) on record.

The following maps are from the NCEI's U.S. Maps page (link) and they show how this winter's temperatures ranked compared to history.






Taking a finer view (county level), it's interesting to note that the mountainous counties of Colorado actually didn't have their all time hottest winter this year. I think 1981 takes that spot. Snowpack conditions are also comparable to but not worse than 1981 at most locations.




Winter Temperature Departure from Average
The above maps show how this winter ranks compared to other winters, but how hot was it really? Looking at average temperature plots from several sources, it appears that most of the high plains and intermountain basins, including places like Denver, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, and Billings saw average temperatures of 9-10 degrees above average for the entire three month winter period.

From the NCEI:



From the PRISM Group:



ECMWF ERA5 Reanalysis (watch out, this one's in degrees Celsius!)


The last 2 maps are also notable because they use the base period 1991-2020 to calculate their temperature departure from average. This was a time where the CONUS had already warmed significantly above 20th century norms, and to see anomalies ~10 degrees above that is shocking.



Precipitation
Precipitation anomalies this winter were generally not that notable across the west. And yet, there's still been a historic snow drought due to the anomalously warm temperatures seen above.




Ridging
The cause of all this? Apocalyptic ridging for almost the entire winter over the Western US. I'm actually not sure what was responsible for the ridging this winter, but I think it came down to La Nina and the impact of some of the other circulations.

500mb height anomalies from the ECMWF's ERA5 Reanalysis tool illustrate how severe the ridging was this winter:



And a normalized map for a more fair comparison:



Yes, that's really an anomaly of 2.5-3.5 standard deviations above average. Yikes. There weren't any comparable years in the reanalysis data, but 1981 and 2015 were in the ballpark. You can see for yourself at the link I provided.

All in all, it was an unbelievably hot winter across the West. This will almost certainly have severe consequences for western reservoir storage and the summer wildfire season.

From a storm chasing standpoint, western drought often has negative impacts on the chase season, although the summer advection of moisture from the Gulf will sometimes be enough to override whatever drought conditions may be present. We'll just have to see how it plays out this year, especially given the crazy ENSO forecast for the summer.