The western US is in a snow drought, raising fears for summer water supplies

Snowboarders and skiers stand at the summit of Keystone ski resort in Keystone, Colorado, on December 16, 2025. Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post/Getty Images

 By Andrew Freedman

 

Brad Riesenberg has worked in the winter sports industry for more than 20 years, and he’s never seen a winter with such paltry snowfall and mild temperatures as he has this season.

Riesenberg, who is an owner at Backcountry Snowmobiling in Park City, Utah, said customers have been canceling their tours due to a lack of snow. Snowmobiling requires a thick snowpack at lower elevations in order to be viable, Riesenberg pointed out.

“We’ve lost lots and lots of money and it’s been pretty tough,” he said. “This is up there with some of the worst [winters], if not the worst.” 

 

Utah is in a snow drought and it’s not alone: Much of the vast, mountainous West is missing its lifeblood — fueled by record-hot temperatures so far this winter. California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, only recently pasted with heavy snow from atmospheric river storms, are the exception.

And while this is an immediate problem for businesses and active outdoors fans, experts are also worried about bigger implications in the near future.

If the trend continues, it could deepen the West’s long drought, aggravating already contentious negotiations about allocating water along the Colorado River. It could also heighten wildfire risks and reduce water supplies in other areas well beyond the Colorado River Basin.

While there is some snow in the Colorado Rockies, many observing stations that are part of the SNOTEL snow condition monitoring network show record to near-record low levels, below anything seen since the winter of 1980-81, when some of these stations were first installed, said Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist. 

 

“There’s not really anywhere in Colorado that’s doing really well,” Schumacher said. Poor snowfall seasons have happened in the state before, but a “persistent ridge of high pressure” across the West has kept both cold air and snowstorms at bay, he said.

For example, Schumacher said the average temperature in Fort Collins, Colorado, during December blew away the previous record and was equal to the average temperature for the month of March. He said the warmth is dominating weather conversations in the region.

“You can’t not notice when December feels like March,” he said. 

Locations across the American West are experiencing the warmest — or one of the warmest — winters on record. This image covers temperatures between December 1, 2025 and January 7, 2026.

CNN Weather

 

Jon Meyer, Utah’s assistant state climatologist, said the rain events seen so far this winter and lack of mountain snows in the early to mid-winter are part of larger-scale climate shifts affecting the state — changes that could affect long-term economic prospects.

Salt Lake City and the nearby ski resorts are slated to host the Winter Olympics in 2034. Salt Lake City recorded its second-latest measurable snowfall on record this year, when a tenth of an inch fell on December 27.

“I think one area of concern, specifically here in Utah, is the risk of these kinds of years increasing,” Meyer said. “We look at the potential for the Olympics coming up and wanting to have pretty good snow conditions for the 2034 Winter Olympics, and years like this highlight the risk of how climate change is impacting snowpack in Utah and across the globe.”

Water worries are growing

The more immediate risk of poor snow conditions is the impact on water supplies this summer, particularly along the Colorado River but also more broadly across a large expanse of the West.

“Everyone is going to suffer from the lack of snowpack in the Rocky Mountains because that’s how this region gets its water,” Riesenberg said.

Water supply concerns grow with each passing day since the region is so dependent on spring snow runoff for its dry season water supplies, Schumacher said. He noted the long-term trends in the Colorado River Basin, with increasing water demand from a booming population at the same time conditions are getting progressively hotter and drier over time. 

Skiers ride up a chairlift at Deer Valley in Park City, Utah, on December 11, 2025.

Alex Goodlett/The New York Times/Redux

 

The Colorado River flows through the snowy landscape of Grand County, Colorado, in February 2022.

Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images

 

Conditions could turn around in time for a thicker snowpack to yield plenty of spring runoff. But in order to do so, and reach even average snowpack conditions by March, the region would have to see a consistent period of storminess and colder temperatures, lasting on the order of weeks to months, neither of which are currently in the forecast, Schumacher noted.

“The concerns are there for sure, because you don’t want to be sitting at a record low in January, but the end state is not locked in yet,” he said. “Another dry year doesn’t bode well for the Colorado River System.” 

 

Schumacher’s counterparts in Utah and Arizona are also warily eyeing medium-range weather forecasts for any signs of a change in the weather pattern that would signal an improvement in their water outlook as well.

Erinanne Saffell, the Arizona state climatologist, said Phoenix and Tucson had their hottest Decembers on record, and typically snowy places such as Flagstaff have also been unusually warm and dry. She acknowledged the poor start to the snow season but said there is still time to build up more snow cover. Although, like Schumacher, she noted it would take a significant weather pattern shift to avoid intensifying the region’s long-running drought.

“So we still have January, February and March to get through,” she said, noting that there has been a recent, multi-year trend toward building up a higher snowpack in March.

“We’ll just keep watching this.”

LONDON – Climate change could be about to alter life in the sea, according to new research in Nature Geoscience.

By Tim Radford, Climate News Network

Researchers at the University of Southern California have been experimenting with common microbes, hoping to predict which will flourish in a warmer and more carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.

The microbes are two genera of cyanobacteria. These tiny creatures – blue-green algae responsible for huge occasional “blooms” in the sea – are life’s bottom line: they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and they photosynthesize atmospheric carbon to release oxygen, so they deliver staples for survival both for all plants and for all animals.

These microbes are everywhere. U.S. researchers recently charted the predicted change in cyanobacteria populations in the arid soils of the North American continent over the next century: now this second team has begun to look at life in the sea.

Fishing boats in Thailand. How will rising CO2 in the oceans affect their future?
Credit: apes_abroad via Wikimedia Commons

David Hutchins and colleagues studies two groups of nitrogen fixers; Trichodesmium andCrocosphaera: the first forms vast and often visible colonies, the second is harder to see, but is found everywhere.

They tested seven strains of the two microbes, from different locations in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, under laboratory conditions in artificial atmospheres that mimicked the predicted carbon dioxide concentrations under various climate scenarios.

The researchers found that as carbon dioxide levels rose, nitrogen-fixing productivity rose too, by up to 125 percent. But the responses varied according to the strain under test: some did better under pre-industrial conditions; some flourished as they neared the levels predicted for a “greenhouse” world.

The research demonstrates what any evolutionary biologist would have predicted: that environmental conditions “select” for particular species with the appropriate adaptations, and that as conditions change, so do populations. What it means in practical terms for the rest of the planet is less certain.

This is basic research which exploits the university’s large “library” of marine microorganisms, and establishes a baseline of data that will give some guide to ocean productivity in the future, but quite how it will affect the marine food chain – and oceans cover 70 percent of the planet, so it is a big question – is still to be established.

“Our findings show that CO2 has the potential to control the biodiversity of these keystone organisms in ocean biology, and our fossil fuel emissions are probably responsible for changing the types of nitrogen fixers that are growing in the ocean,” said Professor Hutchins. “And we’re not entirely certain how that will change the ocean of tomorrow.”

Tim Radford is a reporter for Climate News Network. Climate News Network is a news service led by four veteran British environmental reporters and broadcasters. It delivers news and commentary about climate change for free to media outlets worldwide.

Prepare for 5°C Warmer World

Preparen-se para um Mundo 5 graus mais quente.

LONDRES - Pelo cientista, Sir Robert Watson | O mundo perdeu a chance de manter as emissões de gases do efeito estufa abaixo do nível necessário para evitar que a temperatura suba acima de 2 ° Celsius. De acordo com o cientista britânico, que usou para presidir o IPCC, o Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudança do Clima. ( a perspctiva hoje, segundo o cienista é  de 5 graus Cº)

Um mundo de 5 ° C mais quente do que hoje poderia esperar-se colheitas caindo em países desenvolvidos (observe  seca de 2012 nos EUA) e em desenvolvimento, o aumento do nível do mar ameaçando muitas grandes cidades (New York, Santos, Rio, Balneário caboriú etc...)....







By Alex Kirby, Climate News Network

LONDON — The world has missed the chance to keep greenhouse gas emissions below the level needed to prevent the temperature climbing above 2° Celsius, according to the British scientist who used to chair the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The scientist, Sir Robert Watson, chaired the Panel from 1997 until 2002, when he was
ousted after U.S. pressure for his removal. Watson said there is a 50-50 chance of preventing global average temperatures rising more than 3°C above their level at the start of the industrial age, but a 5°C rise is possible.

That would mean the Earth warming more than it has since the end of the last Ice Age. Speaking at a symposium at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Watson said:
"All the promises in the world, which we're not likely to realize anyway, will not give us
a world with only a 2°C rise. All the evidence, in my opinion, suggests we're on our way to a 3°C to 5°C world.

"Some people are suggesting that we try to geo-engineer our way out of the problem,
intervening in the climate system to moderate warming.

"I'm very, very nervous about that," he said "It shows a level of arrogance that we know how to manage our environment. It certainly needs a lot of research."

Watson concluded: "There are cost-effective and equitable solutions to address climate
change, but political will and moral leadership is needed, and the changes in policies,
practices and technologies required are substantial and not currently under way."

Watson told the Climate News Network: "We're going to have more people in the world and they'll be wealthier, so energy demand is bound to rise.

"We look like having huge quantities of gas from shale. That can be a useful transitional tool: it emits half the carbon you get from coal. But it's not a long-term solution, unless you can use it with carbon capture and storage, CCS. I'm optimistic that CCS can work, but it's got to be shown to work, and what costs and energy penalties it will entail.

"We now know we can't rule out a possible 5°C temperature rise, and we need to start
preparing for it.

"When I was chairing the IPCC we were all very optimistic that we'd have a global agreement to limit emissions, though we knew it would be difficult. But we were hopeful that emissions would not go up at the tremendous rate they are rising now."

A world 5°C warmer than today could expect falling harvests in developing and developed countries, sea level rise threatening many major cities, and significant water shortages. More species would be facing extinction (10 percent of species are thought to be at risk for every 1°C of warming), there would be more (and more intense) extreme weather, and a growing risk of abrupt and major irreversible changes in the climate system.

Watson was voted out as the IPCC's chair in 2002. The weekly New Scientist reported that the year before, shortly after the inauguration of U.S. president George W. Bush, an ExxonMobil executive wrote to the White House asking: "Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?"

Watson is now science director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, and chief scientific adviser to the UK Government's

Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Sir Andy Haines, former director of the London School of Hygiene, told the Climate News Network: "We're not making much progress on climate change at the moment. We need more arguments combining environment and health – cutting coal-burning, for instance, improving access to clean energy, walking and cycling instead of using cars.

"We need to look not just at population, but at consumption in the developed countries. A lot of vested interests don't want to go down that road. We can change by paying for
externalities, like the adverse effects of air pollution.

"We can address the inequalities which are evident in areas like heart disease rates and diet. And we need to influence the UN's new sustainable development goals to include both health and environment indicators."

Alex Kirby, a former BBC environment correspondent, is a founding journalist of Climate News Network. Climate News Network is a news service led by four veteran British environmental reporters and broadcasters. It delivers news and commentary about climate change for free to media outlets worldwide.

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