WA's snowpack zapped as drought looms, reservoirs sink

Washington's snowpack is all but finished, weeks before normal, and some major reservoirs are starting to dip as much as a month early.

This was the country's second-warmest winter on record, leaving the state with far less in its natural water reserves to begin with. (The first-warmest winter passed just two years earlier.) Already this spring, the Puget Sound region has surpassed early heat records, and with a very strong El Niño on the horizon, Washington's unprecedented fourth drought in a row seems likely to bring yet another summer of pain and difficult choices.

That means suffering crop harvests, fallowed lands, damage to vulnerable salmon runs, water restrictions (or outright cuts) and a high-risk wildfire season.

For the Roza Irrigation District in the Yakima River Basin, it means probably half the farmers' normal water allotment, said district manager Scott Revell. Believe it or not, that's better than the previous season.

"Fifty-two percent sounds fabulous when compared to 40% last year," Revell said.

This is the new normal of which climatologists have been warning for years. About four years out of every decade are likely to bring a type of drought like this, and now the people of Washington must figure out how to adapt.

The drawdown

Washington's annual hydrologic cycle depends on mountain snowpack to serve as a series of natural water reservoirs that release their reserves as spring turns to summer. That water replaces what humans, farms and hydropower plants draw from the state's man-made reservoirs.

At some point, the amount of water coming out of the reservoirs exceeds the inflows and Washington's reservoirs begin to fall. Whatever's left in the system at that point must last until the fall rains arrive - perhaps boosted a little by chance and brief summer rains.

For the reservoirs within the Yakima River Basin, that drawdown began on May 21 this year. It started on the same date the year before and a day earlier in 2024, Revell said. That's about a month early.

Farmers in the district, which covers about 72,000 acres of the state's apple, berry, cherry, peach, pear and corn crops, are already moving fast to conserve water. They even cut their supply off for more than a week early in the season and tapped into $1 million of emergency cash to lease extra water rights.

District farmers hope to stretch whatever supply they have to Sept. 30, but even then. their growing season would have to end about three weeks early. Last year, conditions grew so dire that state officials cut off all surface water rights within the basin.

The Yakima River Basin might be the face of Washington's drought, but similar conditions are mirrored elsewhere. Seattle Public Utilities' major reservoirs, Chester Morse Lake and South Fork Tolt Reservoir, began their drawdown around the same time, said deputy state climatologist Karin Bumbaco. However, reservoirs serving Everett and Tacoma are still holding steady, she said.

Utilities in Seattle, Everett and Tacoma have said they aren't projecting disruptions to their water supplies this summer.

Such an early reservoir drawdown amounts to a double whammy, Bumbaco noted, because not only does the same amount of water have to last longer but demand also goes up when conditions turn hotter and drier than normal.

Silver linings

The same conditions leading to Washington's ongoing drought troubles are the reason the region saw torrential and devastating rains in December, Bumbaco said. The atmosphere is warming, which means more of the state's precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow.

This phenomenon brought on by climate change means Washington's relatively few and small reservoirs will see more water when they're already too full to capture the resource and less when there's space to spare.

The state's reservoirs were able to capture some of the water from the atmospheric rivers in December, Bumbaco said. If not for those storms, the impending summer drought would look even worse.

Still, snowpack across the region lagged all winter long, and by now, it's all but gone, except in some of the state's highest peaks, Bumbaco said.

For the first time since 2022, Seattle City Light filled its largest reservoir, Ross Lake, this winter, spokesperson Julie Moore said in an email. While this water isn't used nearly as much for things like agriculture, it is directly connected to electricity rates for the utility's customers.

The utility's reservoirs on the Pend Oreille River and Flathead River basins also successfully filled this year, Moore said. Although all these reservoirs still filled several weeks early and utility officials still expect below-average stream flows in the coming months, she said.

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This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 6:34 AM.