The numbers from Phillips Station on April 1 were stark. State engineers from the California Department of Water Resources arrived at the Sierra Nevada monitoring site — located approximately 90 miles east of Sacramento in El Dorado County — expecting to measure the annual peak of California’s snow supply. They found virtually nothing. A few scattered patches of white on an otherwise dry, grassy field were all that remained of what should have been the state’s frozen water reserve.
The statewide snowpack is now just 18 percent of average for this date, according to the automated snow sensor network. The April 1 measurement at Phillips Station is the second lowest on record, with only the extreme drought year of 2015 — when the site registered just 5 percent of average — ranking worse.
The April 1 survey is not a routine data point. It is the measurement California’s entire water management system is calibrated around. Snowpack acts as a natural reservoir, storing water over winter and releasing it slowly as temperatures warm in spring and summer. On average, it provides about 30 percent of the state’s annual water supply. When that reservoir disappears two months ahead of schedule, the consequences ripple across every sector of California’s economy and landscape.
What Happened to the Snow
The intuitive assumption — that a low snowpack means a dry winter — turns out to be only partially true this year, and the distinction matters.
Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remained. The state experienced temperatures across the Sierra Nevada that climatologists described as more typical of July than March. According to automated sensors across the Sierra Nevada, California’s statewide snowpack likely reached its peak on or near February 24 — six weeks earlier than the historical norm.
DWR Director Karla Nemeth said the year was dominated by two meteorological challenges: most of the state’s precipitation arrived as rain instead of snow, and an extremely warm March accelerated melt of the little snow that did accumulate. Rain, unlike snow, runs off quickly. It does not hold in the Sierra until summer, when California’s Central Valley farms, urban water districts, and ecosystems need it most. When precipitation falls as rain, most of it runs off quickly. Climate scientists say California’s disappearing snowpack is part of a longer-term shift expected to continue as the climate warms.
The result, as Nemeth put it at the Phillips Station survey, was a season that skipped a critical transition. “It’s the combination of rain and limited snow and warmer temperatures in March that are setting us up for what will be a challenging year for water management in the state,” she said.
The Water Supply Picture — Complex and Uneven
The situation carries a counterintuitive wrinkle that state officials were careful to note: California’s reservoirs are, for now, in reasonable condition. Nearly all of California’s largest reservoirs are at 100 percent of their historical average for this time of year. Lake Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir, was at 90 percent of its total capacity, which is 114 percent of the historical average for this date.
That stored water, accumulated from two consecutive above-average wet years in 2023 and 2025, provides a meaningful buffer. But it also creates a management challenge: water managers warn that runoff from snowmelt will be severely limited heading into the dry season, heightening concerns of drought and future water restrictions.
DWR Director Nemeth hinted that some areas may see localized water use restrictions based on local conditions and supply availability. “Depending on where you live, you may have set days in which to water your lawn or water your landscaping,” she said. “The supplies that we have are all we have, and what we save today will be a very important hedge against the potential for a dry next year.” No statewide emergency conservation mandates have been issued as of April 2.
The agricultural sector is where the stress is most visible. Agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of California’s total water use and 80 percent of all water used by homes and businesses, according to DWR. San Joaquin Valley farmer Aaron Barcellos noted that about two-thirds of his farm’s water comes from snowpack storage, and the uncertainty has already begun to affect his planning — particularly with cotton, which he has grown since 1988. “This would be the first year that we are actually thinking about not having any acres,” he said.
The northern Sierra Nevada, which feeds California’s largest reservoirs, is the region of greatest concern. The snowpack in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs stands at just 6 percent of average — a figure that will shape Central Valley water deliveries through the summer and fall.
Fire Season Moves Earlier
Water supply is not the only system under pressure. The disappearance of the snowpack has moved California’s effective fire season window forward by several weeks, compressing the buffer that high-elevation snow typically provides to forest communities.
Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network, put the concern clearly: “I think everyone’s anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season. Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”
In South Lake Tahoe, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts. “It’s pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”
Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuña pointed to a dynamic that makes this year particularly complex: the combination of early drying and years of heavy vegetation growth. Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.” “Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there’s layers of fuel,” he said.
The fuel load built up over two consecutive wet years does not disappear when the snowpack does — it dries. That combination of abundant fuel and an early-arriving dry season is what fire managers are watching closely heading into spring.
A Glimpse of California’s Climate Future
John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, offered the longer view: the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher. “This,” he said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”
Six of the lowest April 1 snowpacks on record have occurred since 2007, and the snowmelt this March looked more like something that would typically happen in late April or even May. The acceleration of that pattern — more rain, less snow, earlier melt, longer dry windows — is what California’s water infrastructure was not originally built to manage. Nemeth’s call for retrofitting aging water systems to capture water during volatile precipitation events reflects a growing recognition in Sacramento that the state’s infrastructure must evolve faster than its climate is shifting.
For now, California has the reservoir water to absorb this year’s snowpack shortfall. Whether the same will be true after a third consecutive low-snow winter is the question water managers are already asking.
