Where do We Stand on Rain and Snow?

To say it’s been a mild winter so far would be an understatement. How mild?  Here’s the temperature departure from normal for the last 90 days.  Crazy warmth in the West. Parts of the central Rockies are more that 10 degrees above average. That’s huge. Meanwhile it’s been cold in the East. 

Just for fun, here is the temperature outlook from the Climate Prediction Center issued in October for the same time period as above. They didn’t show any below normal temperatures anywhere in the lower 48 states. They said the Northeast would be warmer than usual. Not their best outlook.

Let’s zoom in on the Northwest. Just about everywhere east of the Cascades has been at least 4 degrees warmer than average, with some locations more than 6 degrees warmer. 

Here’s some interesting graphics. When you average all of the temperatures in each state and rank them, December 2025 was the warmest December on record (131 years of data) in several western states, including Washington and Oregon. Idaho came up just short of their record. 

Oh, but it gets worse. Here’s the rankings if you combine the last six months of 2025. 

That is an incredible graphic. This isn’t just one site near an airport runway. Or one site with a bad thermometer.  Since 1895, the Northwest (and most of the West) has never seen a July-December as warm as this year. That’s jaw-dropping. 

Ok, so where are we at as far as precipitation?  Here’s the graphic showing the percent of normal precipitation since 1 October. 

Overall, Washington is in pretty good shape, despite our recent dry spell. There’s a few spots that are below normal, but nothing to get alarmed at. Oregon is a different story. But we’ve seen worse, and these numbers aren’t so low that they can’t be made up for in the next few months. 

Of course, when you factor in the mild winter, the precipitation came in the form of rain rather than snow. Here’s the accumulated snowfall for the winter so far. Lots of snow back East, not so much out West. Even snow in Florida.  It’s also easy to spot the Great Lake effect snow in the purple areas. 

Looking at local observations for total snowfall in Northeast Washington shows how bleak it has been. There are locations in North Carolina that have received more snow than we have this winter.  Spokane airport has officially measured 14” of snowfall thus far. 

How about the mountain snow pack?  Really bad (less than 50% of normal) over Oregon and surrounding areas. Not great over the north Cascades and northern Panhandle. The one bright spot is that the headwaters of the Columbia (British Columbia), the Snake (eastern Idaho and northwest Wyoming) and the Pend Oreille (western Montana) all look around average. That’s good news for Basin irrigation as well as power generation. The Spokane River basin (central Idaho Panhandle) doesn’t look so good. 

But let’s take a close look at some specific measurement sites. 

Quartz Peak, up on Mt Spokane. The green line is average snow pack. The black line is the current year. Since the black line is below the red shading, it means that at this point, this is the lowest snowpack on record on Mt Spokane, going back to 1987. 

How about Bunchgrass Meadows in Pend Oreille county?  Tied for worst since 1982. 

Schweitzer Mountain?  There have been a couple of years that were worse at this point in the season, but not many. 

And lastly, Lookout Pass (which is headwaters for the Spokane River). Not the worst year ever. Just the second worst since 1981. Bleak. 

On average, snow pack continues to build in our mountains until about 1 April. So yes, there is time. But we have to have a pattern change that brings not just normal snowfall, but above normal. 

You may hear of some references to the poor snowpack of 2015, and its implications on the worst fire year in our area on record (records go back to 1970). Wild fire season can possibly be extended by low snowpack, since the mountains will be devoid of snow sooner than in normal years. But studies have shown that summer temperatures have the best correlation to fire season. June 2015 was the hottest on record, which dried out all of our fuels much earlier than normal. And a large outbreak of lightning in August started a number of wildfires. So the poor snowpack that year may have played a role, but was not the only factor.