The State of Snow in March 2015
2015 has seemed like a bad snow year to many, so how bad is it at the moment? Well, in short, the current snow situation across the whole West is the lowest in at least 25 years for this time of year (and limited records suggest the lowest in over 35 years).
There are over 550 SNOTEL stations with records extending back 25 years or more and we will use these to look at this matter. There are only about 178 stations with a record of 35 years or more - using only these stations tells the same story, i.e. that the current snowpack is the lowest of the period of automated recording. (Manual records extend over 50 years in many places, though I have not used that data here.)
This analysis has used March 15th as a date within the water year to demonstrate the current snow status - the season is not yet done and hopefully we will see some April storms boost snowpack totals.
Two maps are shown: one (above) gives the State-wide mean snow water equivalent as a percentage of the 25-year average the other gives the rank of the overall State-wide snow out of the past 25-years. A rank of 1 means it is the lowest snow year. The black dots in the images are the stations that were used in the analysis.
Every western State is below the longer term mean snowpack (though a few individual regions/ranges are above average). Meanwhile, Boston has broken its record for the snowiest season in over 100 years of record!
The current situation (updated daily) is available in the Percentage of Mean SWE image.
| Sample Stations | |
|---|---|
| Washington | Oregon |
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| California | Nevada |
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The States of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Utah are all displaying the lowest or second lowest snow totals for the last 25 years. Montana, Idaho and Arizona are all in the lowest 4 years of the past 25. A late February storm gave New Mexico a considerable boost. No State is in the upper half of their snow mass records.
What about Alaska?
Like much of the West Coast, the southern Alaskan mountains have had a poor 2015 (which follow on the heels of a poor 2014). The record at Turnagain Pass is symbolic of much of the area. The Alyeska ski area is only reporting 308" of snowfall thus far, which is less than half the longer term end-of-season average of 650". The 2013/14 seaon at Alyeska only reported 476" of snowfall was the lowest since 1999-2000 (the extent of their displayed record).
Meanwhile, the interior of Alaska has recently received several large falls of snow and is now above average. Monument Creek is just to the west of Fairbanks and is representative of all the stations in that region.
To see the status of other stations, check the real-time Alaska page.
What was the "biggest" year in the last 25yrs?
1997 was the stand-out year in the recent past as the biggest snow year across the West as a whole.
What did 2014 look like?
2014 was a year with a big East-North-East to South-West gradient in the US West. The states of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado all had large snow years (and some execellent skiing), with some stations registering 35 year maximums in their snowpack in March. In contrast the coastal States all suffered from poor snow accumulation, as did the more southern States of New Mexico and Arizona.
