Nevada snowpack hits 40-year low as warm winter deepens Western water stress

Nevada closed out 2025 with its lowest snowpack in more than 40 years, as unseasonably warm temperatures pushed precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow across much of the West, federal hydrologists said. The snow drought has left mountain ranges from the Sierra Nevada to the Colorado Rockies far below normal, threatening spring and summer water supplies for farms, cities and the already-strained Colorado River system.

Mountain snowpack functions as a natural reservoir — accumulating through winter and releasing slowly as meltwater through spring and summer. When warm temperatures suppress snow formation, that storage disappears, leaving communities, farmers and wildlife habitats without the steady streamflow they depend on once warmer months arrive.

Nevada and much of the West face a winter of drastically diminished snowpack, as unseasonably warm temperatures redirected precipitation that would normally fall as snow into rain, leaving mountain reservoirs at their lowest levels in more than four decades, federal hydrologists said this week.

On Jan. 1, just 379,000 acres across the West were covered with snow — compared with the roughly 1.46 million acres typically blanketed at that time of year, according to data from federal monitoring stations. Nevada and the Eastern Sierra closed out 2025 with the lowest snowpack in more than 40 years.

“It was an unusually warm start to the season. When we got storms, we got rain instead of snow in the mountains,” said Jeff Anderson, hydrologist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Nevada. “It’s not just here — there’s been snow level issues all across the West this winter.”

A warm autumn with lasting consequences

Statewide temperatures in Nevada ran nearly 6 degrees above the 30-year normal during November. Reno tied its record for the warmest November since 1893, with the city’s first frost arriving in mid-November — the latest fall freeze on record. Some days reached temperatures 10 degrees or more above normal.

As of Jan. 1, Nevada’s statewide snowpack stood at 74 percent of its historical median, a figure that overstates conditions in the state’s interior basins. The snow water equivalent — the amount of water contained within the snowpack — sat at just 24 percent of the median in the Upper Humboldt Basin, and 31 percent in the Lower Humboldt. Tim Bardsley, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service, said at an early January briefing that it was the worst start to winter for that region in nearly a decade, with only a 20 percent chance of reaching median snowpack by season’s end. The Ruby Mountains outside Elko recorded their lowest snow water amounts on record.

Baker Perry, Nevada’s state climatologist, said the warming trend reflects what the region’s future holds. “We’re looking at the future here of the West,” Perry said.

Rain isn’t a substitute

The snow drought has unfolded against an unusual backdrop: much of the West is not experiencing a traditional precipitation deficit. Heavy autumn rainfall kept soil moisture elevated, and most of California and Nevada are free of severe drought designation on federal maps. But the distinction matters for water managers.

“You can only store so much water in the soil,” Perry said. “The snowpack is the best winter reservoir to store water for summer,” Anderson said.

Without snowpack, the steady release of meltwater that sustains irrigation, municipal supplies, fisheries and wildlife through dry summer months simply does not occur. Ski resorts and winter-recreation industries also face direct revenue losses when warm temperatures suppress natural snow cover.

Colorado River compounds the pressure

Conditions are more acute across the Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to seven states and Mexico. While the Northern Rockies carried adequate snowpack, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and southern Colorado — all heavily reliant on the over-tapped river — were “in pretty poor condition,” Bardsley said.

Nearly a quarter of snow measurement stations in Colorado with at least 20 years of data recorded all-time lows on Christmas Day, when temperatures ran 15 to 25 degrees above normal. More than three-quarters of measurement sites in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico fell below the 20th percentile in early January — even as the region had received more than 100 percent of normal total precipitation.

The river’s two primary storage reservoirs reflect years of accumulated shortfall: Lake Mead stood at 33 percent of capacity and Lake Powell at 26 percent.

Federal guidelines and state negotiations

Earlier this month, the federal Bureau of Reclamation released a draft environmental impact statement outlining proposals for operating Powell and Mead if the seven Colorado River Basin states cannot reach a new management agreement on their own. The states, including Nevada, are seeking to negotiate their own accord rather than have federal guidelines imposed.

Nevada, the smallest user of Colorado River water, has absorbed a 7 percent cut to its allocation in recent years. Bronson Mack, a spokesperson for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said no further cuts to Nevada’s share are expected in 2026, noting that Southern Nevada typically does not consume its full allotment.

Not all parties view the federal draft favorably. “It is clear federal officials are determined to prop up Lake Powell and limit the pain for the Upper Basin while the Lower Basin bears the brunt,” Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, said of the proposed guidelines.

A final decision on Colorado River management is due Oct. 1, the start of the new federal water year.