Warmest Winter Ever In 6 Western States; Temps In 50s And 60s Across Rockies Last Week, Even Above 10,000 Feet

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The intense heat wave threatens to make water management all the more challenging. Much of the thin snowpack was already “ready to melt” before the heat set in, said Jon Meyer, assistant state climatologist at the Utah Climate Center. “This is the nail in the coffin.” It’s unusual to see the whole West like this, said Leanne Lestak, an associate senior scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder who specializes in mapping snow and how much water it holds.

In early March, Ms. Lestak and her team found that vast majority of the Western United States had less than two-thirds of the amount of snow typical for this time of year, with few exceptions. In Arizona and parts of Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon, snowpack was less than a quarter of what it would usually be. “The situation is pretty dire,” Dr. Meyer said.


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The heat wave is also increasing the already-elevated fire risk across some drought-stricken areas. In Nebraska, drought set the stage for the largest wildfire in state history, which broke out last week and has not yet been contained.The conditions that led to this year’s low snowpack are unusual, too. Snow droughts often develop from dry weather patterns that starve the West of any significant precipitation during the winter, said Dan McEvoy, a climatologist at the Desert Research Institute and Western Regional Climate Center.

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This heat wave is so extreme that it would only be expected to occur once about every 500 years in the current climate, according to World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who study links between extreme weather events and climate change. “These temperatures are completely off the scale for March, and our data shows that they would be virtually impossible in a world without human-caused climate change,” said Ben Clarke, a research associate in extreme weather and climate change at Imperial College London. In places like the Colorado Front Range, home to the majority of that state’s population, snowpack serves as the largest source of water. For the utility Denver Water, snowpack usually contains significantly more water than its largest surface reservoir, said Taylor Winchell, the agency’s climate adaptation program lead.

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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/03/21/climate/west-coast-heat-wave-water-shortage.html