Washington’s 2024-2025 Snow Season A Disappointment

Outside of a stray snowflake in the higher elevations, it’s safe to say the 2024-2025 snow season is over here in the Northwest.  So, how did the Washington snowpack turn out this year?

Matt Warbritton with NRSC says there were some regions that had a good snow year, such as the Upper Columbia Basin and in the southern Washington Cascades.

“But as we move up the Cascades into the central and northern portions, snowpack there has been. Really pretty poor throughout the season, and now that we're in spring, well into the melt season and approaching early summer snowpack as a percent of normal has degraded quite a bit.” 

As of this week no basins across Washington were at average for this time of year.  And the two that were closest were the Lower Columbia at 98% of average and the Lower Snake-Walla Walla, at 95% of normal.  Warbritton added what made this snow year difficult, if not frustrating, was the fact that the season started so strong with good snowpacks reported in October and November.

“And as we progressed through the winter, a lot of the storm impacts favored the southern Cascades in Washington, so we continued to see snow deficits across a large portion of the Cascades and even on the peninsula through the winter. Sort of a shift in storm tracks from the early season as we went through the winter, we just saw those storm tracks gradually shift more and more south into southern Oregon and northern California.”

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