Warm Western winter leaves ski towns dry as Northeast sees record snowfall

Unseasonably warm weather across the Western United States has left ski resorts short on snow this early in the season, while the East has been peppered with record snowfall. The warmth is complicating operations at Western resorts and straining water expectations for downstream communities that rely on snowpack for runoff. "Mother Nature has been dealing a really hard deck," said Kevin Cooper, president of the Kirkwood Ski Education Foundation in Lake Tahoe, describing the unusual stretch of warm, dry weather.

Resorts along the Lake Tahoe basin have opened only a small share of lifts because above-average temperatures have reduced natural snow and hindered snowmaking. The warmth has also hit business in Colorado, where sleigh rides have been replaced by wagons due to little snowfall. "We’ve got three big sleighs that can hold up to 12 people each on them," Bearcat Stables owner Nicole Godley said near Vail. "Now, we don't have any snow, so we just switched those sleighs to wagons. December is when we make most of our money. If there's not a good December, then we kind of have to start thinking ahead of what can we do for the community, our customers, to make them more intrigued to come here."

But the flip side of the season’s uneven pattern has arrived in the Northeast and Midwest, where some resorts report record snowfall this month. Vermont’s Killington Resort and Pico Mountain had about 100 trails open amid unseasonably cold conditions, part of a contrast to the West. "By far the best conditions I have ever seen for this time of year," said Josh Reed, a Killington resort spokesman. Another skier, Elena Veatch, added, "I don't take a good New England winter for granted with our warming climate."

In the West, however, the weather remains the dominant story. In Utah, temperatures around the Salt Lake City area have been 7-10 degrees higher than normal in recent weeks, according to the National Weather Service. Oregon, Idaho and western Colorado also posted their warmest Novembers on record, with temperatures 6-8.5 degrees warmer than the norm. Jason Gerlich, a drought information coordinator at NOAA, said, "Precipitation has been near normal for most places across the West, but warmer temperatures are driving that precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow."

The warmth and sparse snow are affecting the region’s hydrology as much as its ski season. The lack of snow is manifesting itself through flooding seen in the Pacific Northwest, Gerlich noted. In Washington, thousands were placed under a life-threatening flash flood warning on Monday after a dam failed south of Seattle. The National Weather Service said more than 46,000 people, along with two schools and one hospital, could be impacted. California faces a related threat as an atmospheric river is forecast to bring heavy rain, with potential floods and landslides in parts of the state. An atmospheric river is a long, narrow tract of the atmosphere that gathers moisture from the tropics and sweeps it toward the poles. The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for parts of Northern California from 4 p.m. Saturday until 4 p.m. Monday, with heavy precipitation expected to be accompanied by high-elevation snow for the Sierra Nevada.

"That snowpack is one of our largest reservoirs for water supply across the West," Gerlich said, underscoring why officials emphasize the importance of snow for both drought management and flood risk planning. Yet, despite the broad patterns, forecasters caution that a single storm could turn conditions around quickly. While Western resorts chase snow, the broader climate signal remains: warmer temperatures are reshaping how and when snow falls, and how that snow melts and runs off into rivers and reservoirs.

Farmers and ranchers rely on snowpack water in their everyday lives, and the current pattern highlights the fragility of this resource. NOAA and the NWS say monitoring will continue as forecasters watch for renewed storms that could refill Western snowpack and blunt the risk of drought or delayed water deliveries later in the season.