Scorching March heat drops California snowpack to second-lowest mark in 75 years
The light snow flurries in the Tahoe area this week after a spell of record-setting March heatwaves across California were not enough to reverse the damage.
California’s water officials gathered at Philips Station near Lake Tahoe on the first day of April to measure what is typically the winter’s peak snowpack. Instead, they found only thin, patchy snow and no measurable snow, marking the second-lowest April 1 snowpack in 75 years.
At the Phillips Station snow survey site, much of the field had been reduced to wet, matted grass. From the remaining patchy snow, the Department of Water Resources officials were not able to obtain any measurable snowpack using their survey pole.
The devastating final snow survey of the season at Phillips Station aligned with a broader snow drought trend across the state, with the statewide snowpack remaining far below average at 18%. Wednesday’s statewide April 1 measurement is also the second-lowest April 1 snowpack since 1950 for California, it is a continued decrease from the late February survey, when the state snowpack stood at 66% of average.
“What we have in our reservoirs is what we have, and we have it to manage for the next six months or so, until we hit October,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources on Wednesday.
“We will know with more clarity next year if this year is in fact, the start of a hydrologic drought in California and throughout the West.”
Devastating, scorching March
The Sierra snowpack saw some promising accumulations earlier in the winter, especially between late December and early January, and during a very cold storm in mid-February that produced a lot of snow. Thanks to those January and February storms, snowpack and soil moisture in key state basins saw an impressive bump. But that wet trend did not last long, as the state was soon hit with unprecedented heat.
By March 1, about 20% of the statewide snowpack had already melted away. The trend continued throughout the month with Southern California experiencing unusually hot March temperatures, reaching the 90s and 100s in some regions.
“The temperatures that we observed this past March, especially on the most extreme days of the heatwave in different places, represented the largest departure from whatever the seasonal average would have typically been in these locations that we’ve ever observed,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, during a webinar on Tuesday.
Climate change has contributed to more frequent and intense extreme weather, from storms to heat waves to drought. In California, thinning snowpack at lower mountain elevations has led to a “profound shift” at South Lake Tahoe’s 6,000-foot elevation, where winter precipitation that historically fell as snow is now mostly falling as rain.
“Increasingly, we see rain even at much higher elevations, like we did this winter. This winter, it’s rained many times at nine (thousand) and even 10,000 feet, and on a couple of occasions, even up at 12,000 feet,” Swain said earlier this month.
Wildfire risk creeping in
As of March 31, Shasta Lake, the state’s largest reservoir, remains above historical average at 113%. Oroville, Folsom, and New Bullards Bar stand at 123%, 133%, and 115%, respectively. Though the state is seeing a surface water supply far above average, March’s heat shock has left many less confident about the fate of water supply for the upcoming dry season.
Swain predicted some water supply issues later this year because reservoirs won’t be replenished by the snowpack that normally melts gradually and acts as a natural reservoir. At the same time, however, he noted those issues won’t become a major problem. Instead, the primary impact is likely to be worse wildfire conditions later in the summer.
“Even though soil moisture is higher than average now, it will probably end up being significantly lower than average by mid-late summer,” Swain said, adding that the moisture in the soil now is the moisture the state would otherwise typically see between June and August.
“And that means that later in the summer, it’s much more likely that the higher elevation forests will dry out as we get toward the middle or the end of the long, dry summer in August, September, October,” Swain said, warning that if the Sierra Nevada does not receive precipitation by early water season of October, ecosystems could be stressed and wildfire risks will rise.
This story was originally published April 1, 2026 at 1:14 PM.
