As we enter 2026, let’s take a moment to check in on what a wild month of December weather has meant for snowpack, water supplies, and the potential for drought in the year ahead.
The massive rains and devastating floods that swept through communities across Washington in the first half of December were followed by cooler weather that led to heavy snowfall, and then a dry patch to finish out the year.
The December weather drama leaves us with an obvious question: All of that precipitation did a whole lot of damage, but did it do any good?
After a drought declaration that spanned much of western and central Washington this summer, you might think that record rainfall would bring welcome relief.
But for Washington water supplies, there is no substitute for snow. We rely on a thick snowpack to build up over winter, and then gradually melt in spring and summer, feeding rivers and refilling aquifers.
The massive atmospheric rivers that hit Washington in December did put some much-needed water into our reservoirs – storage in the six Yakima Basin reservoirs now stands at 135% of typical levels for this point of the year. However, that doesn’t mean the reservoirs are actually full yet. The Yakima reservoirs are now at a combined 63% of capacity, up from 39% on Dec. 11.
To repeat ourselves, there is no substitute for snow. And, as of Jan. 5, statewide snowpack was at 63% of normal, so we still have ground to make up. Contrast that with total precipitation in the state, which now stands at 134% of normal.
Data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Snowpack Telemetry (SNOTEL) monitoring stations indicate many Washington river basins are still struggling:
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As of Jan. 5, snowpack was 50% of normal in the Olympics, 47% in the Walla Walla, 45% in the Southern Cascades and 50% in the Central Cascades.
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In the Yakima Basin, snowpack stands at 46% of normal in the Upper Yakima, Naches is at 55% of normal, and the Lower Yakima stands at 75% of normal snowpack.
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North central Washington is the big outlier, with the Upper Columbia Basin standing at 123% of normal snowpack and the Northern Cascades at 101%. Even in those areas, the topline number contains a wide variation between monitoring stations. For instance, Beaver Pass was at 38% of normal, while Harts Pass stood at 189% of normal.
“These last few weeks have highlighted the relationship between floods, snow and drought,” said Caroline Mellor, Ecology’s statewide drought lead. “The warm December temperatures led to too much precipitation coming as rain and not enough as snow. This means that we still have ground to make up to avoid water supply concerns next summer.”
Warm temperatures worsened floods and increased the likelihood of drought in 2026.
To put it plainly, we’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to drought in 2026. What we need for our water supply is less pineapple express and more Polar Express.
Building a big snowpack is like putting water in the bank for our state. The snowbank, you might say.
December rains just don’t have the same effect, no matter how much water falls. There’s no place to store it all, and so the extra water (eventually) drains away into the Pacific Ocean.
Looking ahead: Solutions light the path forward through the winter dark
The good news is that there is still time to build up that snowpack – a major winter storm is forecast to hit the Cascades today, in fact!
The bad news is that one big storm won’t be enough to make up lost ground – and even finishing the winter with hefty snowpack is no longer a guarantee.
Our challenge in recent years has been that, even if we get the snow, we haven’t been able to keep it. This was the problem in the central and northern Cascades in the spring of 2025. We had decent snowpack numbers, but it melted out quickly, forcing Ecology to broaden our drought declaration to cover those regions beginning in June.
This is becoming the new normal in Washington. Climate change has transformed snowy winters into rainy ones, and the snow we do get doesn’t last as long as we need it to.
Climate change models predict that, in the future, 40% of Washington water years will include snow drought. Meanwhile, our infrastructure and water use habits were designed for precipitation and temperature patterns of the past. We need to adapt.
Even in places that aren’t dependent on snowpack to feed their water needs, the atmospheric rivers did not end the drought, although the additional precipitation did help soil moisture.
In Washington, drought is determined by water supply, not simply precipitation.
The situation is not hopeless. The dark, wet, cold months ahead give us time to play catch up.
La Niña, a climate pattern that often delivers wetter and cooler weather in Washington, is forecasted to be present through January. The forecast for that period is for above-normal precipitation, though temperature predictions remain uncertain.
Looking much further ahead, it’s clear that we need to be better prepared to deal with both winter floods and summer drought – and that includes improving our ability to capture more of the precipitation we get, whether it comes as rain, sleet or snow.
That path forward won’t be one size fits all. We need different solutions for different watersheds.
We’ll also be wishing for new, more flexible tools to manage water in the face of a changing climate.
Only by working together will we find common solutions to our water supply challenges and build the resiliency necessary to mitigate the impacts of too much water one month and too little water the next.