Normally in Washington, around the start of June you’d want to see a nice, drawn-out melting of the mountain snowpack. Over time that water drains into the state’s reservoirs, where it powers our hydro plants, cities and farms.
But this year, state officials are saying Washington’s drought conditions are sinking from bad to worse. On Thursday, they expanded the state’s drought emergency to areas of Western Washington, including portions of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.
The state saw a poor snowpack generally over the winter, a bad start on the heels of drought years in 2024 and 2023. Then, warmer-than-normal temperatures began to melt that snow faster than normal, forcing the excess water to wash downstream and into the Pacific Ocean rather than remaining in reservoirs.
Before winter even ended, officials with Washington’s Department of Ecology declared a drought emergency for a central portion of the state. The expanded emergency now includes 22 watersheds across 15 counties.
“Scientists are telling us this is the new normal,” said Casey Sixkiller, head of Ecology. “The conditions this year are what we can expect nearly every other year from now on.”
Seattle, Tacoma and Everett are not included in the drought emergency. Instead, they’re covered under a less severe category of drought advisory. Even so, Seattle Public Utilities still anticipates it will have to find new sources of water for the growing customer base in an increasingly dry area over the coming decades.
When Ecology announced its first drought emergency in April, Sixkiller said he was hoping the state might still have a chance for a final shot of snow to pull back from the brink. What we saw instead was more warm, dry weather.
April was nearly two degrees Fahrenheit above normal temperatures, said Deputy State Climatologist Karin Bumbaco, ranking it as the 25th warmest since records began in 1895. Total precipitation in April and May sank to less than 60% of normal amounts for most of the state.
Snowpack levels peaked nearly two weeks earlier than normal and it’s melting as much as four weeks early, Bumbaco said.
The upcoming months are likely to hold more of the same warm, dry weather, Bumbaco said. Water supply forecasts anticipate the areas included in the drought emergency will see less than three quarters of their normal water supply.
This year’s drought emergency declaration unlocks about $4.5 million set aside for relief work. Thursday’s expansion of that declaration allows more people to apply for that money but it also means the relatively small sum is now expected to cover more ground than originally expected.
This is the third year in a row that state officials have declared drought emergencies.
Think of Washington’s mountain snowpack as a type of natural reservoir. It holds billions of gallons of frozen water, which melt (ideally, slowly) and fill our man-made reservoirs in the early summer weeks. Once they’re filled, these man-made reservoirs have to last us through the dry season until the fall rains return. Fill the reservoirs too early and snowmelt that’s still flowing downstream must be allowed to run into Puget Sound because there’s no space in which to hold that water.
Global warming means this all happens more often. Sometimes for years on end.
Precipitation that once fell as snow is instead falling as rain, so that water isn’t held in that natural snowpack reservoir. This is called a “snow drought.” Snowpack that does fall on the mountains often melts weeks earlier than normal. And the dry summer season starts sooner and lasts longer, meaning water reserves are stretched thinner.
Less water means more expensive hydropower, crop damage, water restrictions and dangerous conditions for salmon and other aspects of the natural environment.
