Click the link to read the article on The Water Desk website (Mitch Tobin):

February 4, 2026

This story was produced by The Water Desk, an independent journalism program at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

The American West’s snowpack is valuable for many reasons.

Snowmelt supplies much of the water flowing through the region’s streams, rivers, irrigation canals and household faucets—a vital role that has taken on new urgency this winter as much of the West struggles with scant snow cover.

Snowfall supports countless species, maintains forest health and helps keep a lid on wildfires. It even cools the planet by reflecting sunlight. 

Snowflakes also underlie the region’s multi-billion-dollar winter sports industry, fueling local economies and drawing millions of participants. In warmer months, boating and fishing depend on water that was once frozen.

Snow performs all these functions, but can its worth be calculated in dollars and cents? And how is climate change affecting that value?

Like many aspects of nature, snow is easier to monetize in some domains than others. Its ecological benefits are complex, and its aesthetic qualities are subjective: some Westerners love the ice crystals, others dread them. 

But in the economic realm, researchers have attempted to put a dollar figure on the region’s snow, and the numbers they’ve generated are huge. 

“This stuff’s worth trillions, not billions” of dollars, said snow scientist Matthew Sturm, lead author of a widely cited 2017 paper in Water Resources Research that estimated the value of the water embedded in the West’s snowpack. “I turn on the tap in the Western states—what comes out of it is mostly snow.”

The Colorado River, which supplies drinking water to tens of millions of people and irrigates vast croplands, is primarily driven by snowmelt. The river generated an estimated $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity, according to a 2014 report commissioned by Protect the Flows, a business coalition, and conducted by Arizona State University. Adjusted only for inflation—not the region’s growth—that figure was equivalent to about $1.9 trillion in 2025, underscoring the high stakes of the ongoing, contentious negotiations over how to manage the Colorado River.

For some researchers, assigning a dollar value to snow is more than an academic exercise. In an era of tightening budgets and federal cutbacks in science, economic estimates can help justify investments in monitoring and studying snow—and highlight how much is at risk as the climate warms.

“If you want society to respond, you better talk about things that are fairly immediate, right at people’s doorsteps, and are easy to explain,” said Sturm, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute and the author of A Field Guide to Snow.

Or as Sturm’s paper puts it, “the ‘killer argument’ to the wider public that vigorous snow research is important would come by framing the argument in terms of money, something everyone understands.”

Peer-reviewed studies explicitly valuing the snowpack are rare, but some analyses have also calculated the sizable economic impact of snow sports. This winter, skiing and snowboarding in the West have been constrained not only by a lack of snowfall but also by record warmth that limited some resorts’ ability to make artificial snow. 

A 2024 report from the National Ski Areas Association concluded that downhill snow sports generate $58.9 billion in annual economic activity in the United States and support an estimated 533,000 ski and snowboard jobs nationwide. 

While the snowpack delivers tangible economic benefits—some easier to price than others—snowfall also carries real costs. Any accounting of snow’s economic impact must also reckon with the damage it causes.

Winter weather contributes to fatalities from avalanches in the mountains and from heart attacksin cities among people shoveling snow. But those deaths pale in comparison to the toll on slick roads. Each year, 24% of weather-related vehicle crashes happen on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, and 15% occur when snow or sleet is falling, according to the Federal Highway Administration. More than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,800 are injured each year in crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, the agency reports, though not all of those incidents are weather related.

Valuing the snowpack’s water

The 2017 paper began with a phone call that Sturm made to Michael Goldstein, a professor of finance at Babson College with whom he had previously collaborated. 

“Hey, what do you think snowpack’s worth?” Goldstein recalled Sturm asking.

Goldstein wasn’t a snow expert, but he told Sturm, “If we make some simplifying assumptions here, I could value it for you.”

“I just thought it was a cool question,” said Goldstein, who is also the Donald P. Babson Chair in Applied Investments at Babson. 

Since its publication, the study has been cited nearly 400 times, according to Google Scholar. 

Viewed through an economic lens, the snowpack’s role as a mountain water tower provided a clear value that Goldstein could quantify.

“Nature naturally stores the water for you for free. You didn’t have to build a reservoir,” Goldstein said. “If that goes away, that actually has a cost. And the cost is the replacement cost of either storing the water or getting water from a different source.”

Climate change is already having a variety of profound effects on the West’s snow, such as shrinking the snowpack season, but the study focuses on one key impact: the shift from snow to rain as temperatures rise. 

Even if total precipitation remains unchanged in the decades ahead, a transition from snow to rain—and faster melting of the snowpack—means runoff will occur earlier in the year. In much of the West, however, it may be impossible to capture all that earlier water for later use because dam managers must leave enough empty space in reservoirs to reduce the risk of catastrophic flooding.

“There is not enough reservoir storage capacity over most of the West to handle this shift in maximum runoff and so most of the ‘early water’ will be passed on to the oceans,” according to a 2005 study.

To estimate the declining value of the snowpack in a warming climate, the 2017 paper made some assumptions about the transition from snow to rain—an evolution expected to be more pronounced in warmer regions such as California and Oregon than in colder locations like the Northern Rockies. 

Examining a range of future trajectories spanning five to 100 years, the researchers assumed that half of current snowfall would fall as rain by the end of the scenario. 

For the 50% of snow that would eventually convert to rain, some of the water could be captured by existing reservoirs. But while Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado River currently have plenty of room to spare, the authors note that “virtually every report we have found on the heavily dammed water systems of the West suggests that reservoir capacity (except when immediately following drought) is maxed out.” As a result, the paper assumes that water systems would lose two-thirds of the reduced snowmelt runoff.  

“We’re losing, essentially, the storage capacity of snow—meaning in lieu of snow, we get rain,” Sturm said.

With their estimates of the amount of water lost as snow shifts to rain, the researchers could then multiply those figures by the cost of water to begin determining the decline in monetary value. The paper uses two water prices to bracket its estimates: $200 and $900 per acre-foot (an acre-foot is the volume of water needed to cover an acre of land to a depth of 12 inches, or 325,851 gallons). 

In reality, Goldstein said, the price of water would rise as supplies became scarcer. But the paper holds water prices constant over time, an assumption that yields a conservative estimate of the snowpack’s value.

Discounting the future

The price of water varies greatly across the West, so estimates of the snowpack’s value will necessarily span a broad range. But water costs aren’t the only reason it’s challenging to pin down the snowpack’s monetary worth. 

Another challenge the paper grapples with is the changing value of money over time. Even in the absence of inflation, if someone offered you $100 right now versus $100 in a year, the economically rational choice would be to take the $100 today. After all, a lot can happen in a year—and you could invest the $100 in the meantime. But what if the offer were $105 or $110 a year from now? 

To convert future benefits into today’s dollars, economists use a “discount rate” that accounts for risk and the preference for receiving payments sooner rather than later. A discount rate is “like the foreign exchange rate between consumption today and consumption tomorrow,” Goldstein said.  

The choice of the discount rate can make a big difference in how future costs or benefits are calculated, and it’s often a pivotal factor in studies of the economics of climate change. In the snowpack paper, the authors use three discount rates—1%, 3% and 6%—although they omit the 6% rate in their final valuation “because it is fairly extreme and unlikely to be correct in a water-stressed future world.” 

The higher the discount rate, the more heavily future losses are discounted, reducing the economic justification for acting today, such as acquiring new water supplies or building additional reservoirs. 

Assumptions about the discount rate, the price of water and future climate trajectories all weigh heavily on estimates of the value of the snowpack’s water. In summary, the authors conclude that about 162 million acre-feet of water is deposited as snow in Western mountains each winter. If half of that snowfall were to fall as rain in the future—and two-thirds of that water were to run off to the ocean without being captured—water systems would lose roughly 53.9 million acre-feet per year. That volume is roughly the combined storage capacity of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation’s two largest reservoirs.

The total replacement cost for the lost water ranged from $120 billion to $4.76 trillion, according to the 2017 study. By comparison, the federal government’s budget totaled about $3.85 trillion in fiscal year 2016.

“To date, a full financial evaluation of the importance of snow in our lives has not been made, but computations here and elsewhere indicate it is on the order of trillions of dollars,” the authors write. 

The snowpack’s importance and value vary across the West, with some watersheds more dependent on snowmelt than others. To estimate the local impacts of future snowpack losses, researchers used data from the 2017 study and another paper to create an interactive map that shows the share of water in each Western river basin derived from snow and lets users adjust key variables, including the discount rate, the price of water and the rate at which snow transitions to rain.

Investing in snow science

Jessica Lundquist, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, called the paper “interesting and unique.” Lundquist, who wasn’t an author of the study but is acknowledged for advising the researchers, said the paper not only tried to put a dollar value on the snowpack but “also was trying to put a value on the knowledge.”

“I like the paper because it was a collaboration between a snow scientist and an economist,” Lundquist said. While the estimates of the snowpack’s value are uncertain, Lundquist said the study provides a useful framework for assessing the financial implications of water management strategies. 

In a commentary on the 2017 paper, subtitled “Investments in snow pay high-dollar dividends,” Lundquist wrote that the study “puts the value of snow one thousand times higher than the estimates of snow based on tourism alone.”  

When the commentary was published, snow scientists were trying to convince NASA to launch a satellite mission to study the snowpack.

“We were often getting questions about what is the value not only of snow, but of studying snow,” Lundquist said. 

A satellite dedicated to monitoring snow never launched. But scientists continue to track the snowpack using other spacecraft, along with a suite of tools that includes aircraft, automated stations and manual measurements.

“I think we’re getting progressively better at figuring out how much snow is in the mountains,” Lundquist said. “I think we’ve made tremendous progress in the last 10 years that we can actually quantify it quite well with a number of ways.”

In other parts of the world, however, snowpack monitoring may be very limited. “A lot of what still needs to be done is in other mountain ranges, other places that don’t have these observing networks,” Lundquist said. “There’s a lot of people who depend on water from the Himalaya who just have no idea whether it’s going to be a drought year or a flood year or what is upstream at all.”

Recreational impact of a shrinking snowpack

Beyond supplying water, the West’s snowpack also underpins the region’s winter recreation economy.

During the 2024–25 season, U.S. ski areas recorded 61.5 million skier visits, according to the National Ski Areas Association. This winter, however, visitation across much of the West has suffered amid a widespread snow drought. 

In January, Vail Resorts, which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, reported that visits to its mountains so far this season were down 20% compared to last season, primarily because of poor snow conditions. In the Rockies, only about 11% of the company’s terrain opened in December, when snowfall was nearly 60% below the 30-year average. 

A number of studies have examined how changes in the snowpack affect ski areas—both historically and in future projections. 

Between 1999 and 2010, the U.S. downhill ski industry lost an estimated $1.07 billion in revenue between low- and high-snowfall years, resulting in 13,000 to 27,000 fewer jobs, according to a 2012 analysis by University of New Hampshire researchers. The report was commissioned by Protect Our Winters and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two advocacy groups.

A 2024 study estimated that U.S. ski areas lost more than $5 billion from 2000 to 2019 due to fewer visits and higher snowmaking costs. Compared to the 1960-1979 period, ski seasons from 2000 to 2019 shortened by 5.5 to 7.1 days, according to a model of operations at 226 ski areas.

Looking ahead, the study projected that by the 2050s, ski seasons would shrink by 14 to 33 days under a low greenhouse gas emissions scenario and by 27 to 62 days under a high-emissions pathway. Under those scenarios, annual industry losses ranged from $657 million to $1.35 billion.

The 2024 study accounted for the added expenses of snowmaking, which requires investments in equipment and labor while also increasing water and energy use. It did not, however, include the broader ripple effects of shorter ski seasons on surrounding communities, where hotels, restaurants, bars, retailers, and gas stations depend heavily on tourists’ spending. 

A 2017 study examining future climate impacts on skiing and snowmobiling analyzed 247 winter recreation locations across the continental United States and projected how warming would shorten seasons. The authors concluded that “virtually all locations are projected to see reductions in winter recreation season lengths, exceeding 50% by 2050 and 80% in 2090 for some downhill skiing locations.” 

Those shorter seasons “could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars,” the researchers wrote. They also noted that limiting greenhouse gas pollution “could both delay and substantially reduce adverse impacts to the winter recreation industry.”

A smaller, less reliable snowpack can also affect summertime recreation by reducing streamflows and reservoir levels that support fishing, boating and other water-based activities.

In Colorado, for example, outdoor recreation accounted for 3.2% of the state’s gross domestic product in 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Boating and fishing generated $689 million in economic activity in the state, while snow-related recreation was valued at $1.56 billion—more than any other state.

Other benefits—and costs—of snow

The snowpack’s importance to winter recreation and the West’s water supply are among the easier values to quantify, but they’re not the only benefits snow provides.

On a global scale, one of the most valuable functions of frozen water is that it reflects far more sunlight than bare ground or open ocean. This reflectivity—a property known to scientists as albedo—helps cool the planet. 

A 2013 study examining the thawing Arctic attempted to monetize the loss of that cooling effect. The decline in Arctic snow and ice—along with increased methane emissions from melting permafrost—was estimated to cost society $7.5 trillion to $91.3 trillion from 2010 to 2100. “The frozen Arctic provides immense services to all nations by cooling the earth’s temperature—the cryosphere is an air conditioner for the planet,” the scientists wrote. 

Then again, the loss of snow could reduce some costs to society.

“There’s some side benefits,” Goldstein said. “You might not have a flood because you’re not going to have a massive runoff all at the same time. That does happen. Some things will be reduced.” 

If snow disappeared, so too would snow days that disrupt travel and hamper economic productivity. Winter road maintenance accounts for roughly 20% of state transportation department maintenance budgets, according to the Federal Highway Administration, which estimates that state and local agencies spend more than $2.3 billion annually on snow and ice control annually. 

Between 1980 and 2024, the United States experienced 24 winter storms that each caused more than $1 billion in damages, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Collectively, those disasters cost $104.2 billion and claimed 1,453 lives.

While vehicle crashes, skier visits and acre-feet of snowmelt can be quantified and priced, snow’s benefits and costs also encompass many things that are difficult—if not impossible—to calculate. 

In many ecosystems, for example, snow and snowmelt are vital for plants and animals that have their own economic value, not to mention their intrinsic worth. The 2017 snowpack study did not attempt to price these so-called ecosystem services, which include keeping forests healthy, maintaining cold-water fisheries and sustaining biological diversity. 

Even more challenging to value are the mix of emotions that snow evokes. Beauty—and misery—are in the eye of the beholder. 

“Some people want their white Christmas,” Lundquist said, “and others are like, please don’t shut down my city.”

Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (Ryan Spencer). Here’s an excerpt:

February 6, 2026

At some long-term snow measurement sites, the winters of 1976-77 and 1980-81 were worse than this year, but not by much

Across Colorado, the state’s array of snow telemetry, or SNOTEL systems, have documented record-low snowpack conditions in numerous river basins and on a statewide level several times this winter. Since about Jan. 15, the snow telemetry system has had Colorado’s snowpack statewide sitting at the zeroth percentile, or the worst on record compared to the 30-year period from 1991 to 2020…

“We’ve been stuck for the most part in this warm and dry pattern across the West, going back really to the fall,” Colorado Climatologist Russ Schumacher said. “The snowpack numbers pretty much everywhere in Colorado are pretty ugly right now.”

But going back in Colorado’s history, 1976-77 and 1980-81 are two winters often considered “the worst” for snow. Schumacher noted that the state’s snow telemetry system only began to be built out in the 1980s, so comparison can be difficult. That’s where snow course measurements come in. Snow course measurements, which have been taken by hand about once a month at some sites in Colorado since the 1930s, allow for more direct comparisons to those historically bad snow years.

“That allows you to actually make some comparisons to those really, really awful years from the 76-77, 80-81 that the longtimers there in the mountains will remember,” he said. “This year’s not as bad as those, but in a lot of places, it’s the second or third worst when you include those years.”

At Independence Pass, one site where snow course measurements have been taken for well over half a century, this is the second-worst snowpack on record, according to the data. The only year when Independence Pass had a worse snowpack was the winter of 1976-77. At a snow course measurement site in Blue River in Summit County that has about 70 years of data, this year was also the second-lowest snowpack on record, behind only the winter of 1980-81…Yet, at a snow course measurement site at Berthoud Pass, this year is only the 12th worst on record. The worst February snowpack on record at Berthoud Pass was, once again, during the winter of 1980-81.

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

There was a strong west-to-east temperature gradient this week, with temperatures below normal in the East, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast, and above normal in the West. Precipitation was scarce across large portions of the nation, with many areas receiving less than 25% of normal precipitation. Areas of localized precipitation fell across the Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region. Out east, a winter storm brought snow and mixed precipitation to parts of the Tennessee Valley and the Carolinas, with locally heavy snowfall in some locations.

Across the West, snowpack remains well below the seasonal average. Even in areas that received snow, low snowpack combined with dry soils and low streamflows led to degradations across the Intermountain West. Along the West Coast, precipitation remained limited and uneven. Western Oregon saw dry and drought conditions expand toward the Pacific coast and into far south Washington and northwest California.

Elsewhere, scattered degradations occurred across the South and Southeast, where another week without precipitation added to growing precipitation deficits, except for localized areas of improvement that continued to benefit from last week’s heavy snowfall. Other isolated areas of improvement were seen in southern New Mexico and in the Midwest and Northeast…

High Plains

Conditions across the central and northern High Plains were mostly unchanged this week, as most of the region received little to no meaningful precipitation. Cold temperatures persisted, and where snow did fall, it remained largely frozen in place, limiting short-term benefits to soils or hydrologic conditions. Conditions across the Wyoming and Colorado Plains continued to deteriorate. Snow water equivalent (SWE) remains well below average, with SNOTEL data showing values generally in the 50 to 70 percent of median range, reflecting how snowpack continues to fall short for this time of year despite recent snowfall. Severe drought (D2) expanded from southeastern Wyoming into northeastern Colorado and a little into the Nebraska Panhandle. Abnormal dryness (D0) and moderate drought (D2) also expanded across portions of Kansas…

West

Across much of the West, conditions worsened, driven by a deepening snow drought, limited precipitation, and above-normal temperatures that continued to undermine snowpack development. While some mountain snowfall occurred, amounts were generally modest and failed to keep pace with early February climatological accumulation rates, causing snowpack deficits to expand across much of the region.

The Intermountain West saw conditions intensified as snow accumulation continues to fall well short of what is expected this time of the year. Numerous SNOTEL sites reported SWE below the 15th percentile, with several stations registering the lowest SWE on record for early February. These snowpack deficits were compounded by limited recent precipitation, declining soil moisture, and below-normal streamflows, particularly across northern Idaho and western Montana and extending into central and southern Montana and Wyoming. Similarly, Colorado and Utah saw conditions deteriorate as SWE levels are well below the median level along with drier soil moisture.

Across southwestern Idaho, northern Nevada and into eastern Oregon, persistent warmth, scarce precipitation, poor low-elevation snowpack, and low streamflows led to the expansion of abnormally dry (D0) and moderate drought (D1) conditions as well as the introduction of moderate drought (D2) along the Idaho-Wyoming border. SNOTEL stations in the Owyhee, Independence and Snake Mountains are reporting SWE levels between the ninth percentile to the worst on record…

South

Drought conditions across the South generally continued to worsen this week, as much of the region received little to no precipitation. Temperatures were near to slightly above normal across large portions of the region. Outside of a few localized improvements in northeast Louisiana and southeast Mississippi from last week’s winter storm, conditions continued to degrade across most of the region. Across the southern Plains into the Lower Mississippi Valley, one-category degradations were seen across parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and southwest Mississippi after another dry week with no meaningful precipitation. Short- to mid-term precipitation deficits continue to grow and soil moisture continues to decline, along with streamflows…

Looking Ahead

Over the next five to seven days, an active weather pattern is expected across much of the continental U.S., with several regions showing a strong signal for precipitation. The heaviest precipitation is forecast from the lower Mississippi Valley northeastward into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, where widespread totals of 1 to 3 inches are expected, with locally higher amounts possible. Portions of the central Plains, Midwest, and Great Lakes are anticipated to receive generally 0.5 to 1.5 inches of precipitation during this period. Across the West, precipitation is expected to be widespread from the Pacific Northwest into the northern and central Rockies. Liquid-equivalent totals of 1 to 3 inches are forecast in the Cascades and northern Rockies, with locally higher amounts possible at higher elevations. Farther south into the Great Basin and Southwest, precipitation becomes more scattered, with most areas receiving less than 0.5 inches, and many locations remaining dry. Drier conditions are expected to persist across California, the northern Great Plains, central and southern Texas, and much of the Florida Peninsula, where little to no precipitation is forecast over the next week.

The Climate Prediction Center’s 6–10 day temperature outlook (Feb. 10-14) shows a strong and widespread signal for above-normal temperatures across much of the continental U.S. The highest probabilities of above-normal temperatures are centered over the central and southern Plains, extending northward into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest. Much of the Intermountain West, Rockies, and interior West also favors above-normal temperatures. Along the West Coast, temperatures are expected to be near normal, while parts of the Northeast show a transition from below normal in northern New England to near or above normal farther south. Portions of the Southeast, including Florida, are favored to see near-normal temperatures. Alaska shows a mix of near- to below-normal temperatures across the mainland, with near-normal conditions favored over the southern coast. Hawaii is favored to experience above-normal temperatures during this period.

The Climate Prediction Center’s 6–10 day precipitation outlook (Feb. 10–14) favors above-normal precipitation across much of the western U.S., including the Southwest and West Coast, with elevated probabilities extending into parts of the northern Rockies. Above-normal precipitation is also favored across Alaska and Hawaii during this period. In contrast, below-normal precipitation is favored across Florida and portions of the far Southeast, while much of the central U.S. is expected to see near-normal precipitation.

Just for grins here’s a slideshow of early February US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.

By Kiley Bense, Bob Berwyn, Keerti Gopal, Lee Hedgepeth, Lisa Sorg

January 26, 2026

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Climate change is making disasters more intense and unpredictable. FEMA is less prepared than it was a year ago.

A sprawling winter storm that left hundreds of thousands without power, grounded thousands of flights and disrupted travel across the eastern half of the U.S. could be the first real test of the second Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

The president has said that he wants to eliminate FEMA, and the agency has lost thousands of employees since his second term began. Emergency-management experts have braced for the moment that a weakened FEMA would face a multi-state disaster. 

“We’ve been lucky, really, over the last year,” said Alan Gerard, a retired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist who now writes the newsletter Balanced Weather. “We didn’t have any landfalling hurricanes. We haven’t really had a wide-ranging natural disaster-type situation in the last several months.” 

FEMA typically plays a key role in coordinating and delivering resources when an emergency hits multiple states at once. “FEMA and the whole federal infrastructure is really critical in terms of organizing big responses like this,” said Mathy Stanislaus, a former assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Land & Emergency Management.

President Donald Trump has so far approved federal disaster declarations for 12 states, mostly in the South, in the wake of the storm. 

The Trump administration’s cuts to FEMA come at the same time that climate change is making large-scale weather disasters more likely and more intense, even as the president continues to question the basics of climate science. On Friday, Trump posted on social media about the storm and cold snap, asking followers, “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???” 

In fact, scientists say, global warming has reshaped the atmospheric engine in ways that can make winter storms and extreme cold outbreaks more disruptive than ever.

Rapid Arctic warming and melting, stronger and more intense ocean heat waves, increased atmospheric moisture and more frequent disruptions of the stratospheric polar vortex are all factors “contributing to the extreme winter weather unfolding across the U.S. this week,” Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist and senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said via email.

More than a foot of snow fell across the U.S. from Arkansas to Massachusetts, with some places seeing nearly two feet. Ice blanketed much of the South, bringing down tree limbs and knocking out power from Texas to North Carolina. 

At least 20 people were killed during the storm, and thousands are navigating power loss, dangerous travel conditions and freezing temperatures. More than 600,000 homes and businesses were without power as of Monday afternoon. 

Emergency management experts and government officials warned that the situation is still unfolding, particularly in Southern states impacted by ice. Falls, traffic accidents, hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning are among the possible threats in the storm’s aftermath.

“The danger period is much higher immediately after the storm passes,” said Craig Fugate, a former FEMA administrator.

How Climate Change Reshapes Winter

Scientists agree that human-caused warming has changed the way air and energy move around the planet in complex and interrelated ways that influence outbreaks of extreme winter weather. 

The current cold wave is not happening in isolation, but in a fundamentally altered climate system. At a basic level, the oceans are warmer and the atmosphere holds more moisture than 50 or 100 years ago. Both fuel stronger storms, including nor’easters, which have intensified significantly in recent decades, according to a 2024 study. 

Nor’easters spin up along the East Coast, drag subtropical moisture from the south and pull frigid polar air from the north. Both their maximum wind speeds and hourly precipitation rates have increased since 1940, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, a co-author of the paper. 

That research, he said via email, for the first time was able to quantify the changes. He warned that “more intense storms, with greater amounts of snowfall” are to be expected, even as the planet warms.

“Stronger storms, as they spin, pull up more warm air on one side and pull more cold air down on the other side, so we see both warm and cold temperature extremes associated with them,” he said.

Along with warmer oceans and a wetter atmosphere, global warming has also reduced Arctic sea ice by nearly a third since the 1980s, which is enough to change the path of the jet stream, the wavy, fast-moving river of air that separates cold Arctic air from warmer air to the south. 

Extreme cold events are usually linked to big north-south bends in that flow, said Francis, the Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist, who is known for her research on rapid Arctic warming and its influence on mid-latitude weather patterns. 

Right now, the jet stream is bulging far north over the western U.S. while plunging deep south over the east, allowing Arctic air to spill unusually far south. The pattern is becoming more common as the Arctic warms faster than the rest of the planet, weakening the temperature contrast that normally keeps the jet stream straighter and faster.

“Big waves like this are more common when the Arctic is unusually warm, and it’s near record-warm right now,” she said. The pattern has been common this winter and likely is linked with a strong and persistent ocean heat wave in the North Pacific, she added.

An ocean heat wave in that area bulges the jet stream north over the West, causing a southward dip downstream, over the central and Eastern U.S., followed by another northward bulge that brought extreme warmth to Greenland.

Adding complexity is the fact that Arctic warming is uneven, said atmospheric scientist Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research and a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Parsons Laboratory. He’s known for his work on how Arctic variability influences winter weather and the polar vortex, a pool of frigid air usually locked high over the Arctic. 

Especially intense heating north of Scandinavia ripples the atmosphere in a way that disrupts the polar vortex. When the ripples caused by uneven warming turn into larger waves, they reach the high-altitude polar vortex and distend it, like a soft water balloon. 

In that stretched position, Cohen said, the polar vortex pulls extremely cold air from Siberia across the Arctic and into the central and eastern U.S. Because the air travels quickly, it has little time to warm, increasing the likelihood of severe and long-lasting cold outbreaks. 

Meanwhile, some areas of the U.S. that rely on snow are increasingly out of luck. While the East shivers, much of the West has been gripped by warm and dry conditions for weeks, with winter snowpack—critical for summer stream flows—near record low in many areas.

A Deep Freeze in the Deep South

Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee were among the states hardest hit during the storm, with more than half a million customers still without power as of Monday morning. Utility companies in Tennessee described “catastrophic damage,” and in Mississippi, one company warned it could be weeks before power was fully restored.

That grim news comes as the region faces extremely low temperatures tonight. These conditions could be dire for some people if they are trapped without power in their homes for an extended period of time.

In Louisiana, at least two people died due to hypothermia in Caddo Parish, according to the state’s Department of Health. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency confirmed three deaths related to weather conditions in Crockett, Haywood and Obion counties near Memphis.

The mayor of Oxford, Mississippi, Robyn Tannehill, said in an interview with meteorologist Matt Laubhan that the damage in her town was “extensive.” 

“It looks like there’s been a tornado on every street in Oxford,” she said. “Trees on houses, trees on cars, trees blocking roadways, trees that have pulled whole power lines down and power poles that have snapped. It is an emergency situation right now.”

Fangs of ice hung from trees and power lines in Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Lee told residents in an online briefing Sunday that the storm was “unusually dangerous in many ways.”

Freezing rain, strong winds and temperatures in the lower single digits “can hamper our ability to respond” amid widespread power outages, said Patrick Sheehan, director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

“It looks like there’s been a tornado on every street.”— Robyn Tannehill, mayor of Oxford, Mississippi

Residents in Adamsville, Tennessee, located near the Mississippi border, lost access to running water and won’t get it back until power is restored. 

In North Carolina, some of the worst impacts of the storm occurred in the western mountains, which are still recovering from damage Hurricane Helene inflicted in September 2024.

“We are concerned about the double-whammy impact,” Gov. Josh Stein said during an online briefing Saturday. “Any future trees falling will add more fuel on the ground once we get into wildfire season.”

In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves said on Sunday that the situation in the state would get worse before it got better as ice on trees and power lines continued to cause power outages in gusting winds.Reeves said the state was coordinating with FEMA to bring in additional generators and supplies for warming centers, such as cots, water and blankets.

Some people may have difficulty getting to those warming centers. Road travel continues to be impacted across the South, where temperatures are expected to remain at or below freezing throughout Monday.

“As the governor said, we can sum up our road conditions and road travel with one word, and that is, ‘nope,’” said Brad White, the executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation. “We would love to see y’all but not zigzagging across three lanes of traffic at 40 miles per hour.”

In Alabama, 27-year-old Morgan Lakesha Hawkins of Birmingham was killed and another person was seriously injured after their vehicle struck a guardrail in nearby Mountain Brook. 

The danger for people in the South is not over, especially for those without power. “An extremely cold night is forecast tonight with low temperatures in the single digits,” said Gerard, the meteorologist. “This level of cold is highly unusual, and buildings are not generally built for [it]. The danger of hypothermia and infrastructure damage to things like water pipes and mains is significant.”

“Torturous” Cold in Chicago

The Arctic air brought Chicago its lowest recorded wind chill since 2019, at 36 degrees below zero on Friday, according to the National Weather Service’s local office. Chicago Public Schools closed that day, with the city on an extreme cold watch then and throughout the weekend. NWS warned that just 10 minutes outside could result in frostbite on exposed skin. 

Extreme cold poses other serious health hazards, including hypothermia and the exacerbation of chronic conditions. From Thursday through Monday afternoon, 339 patients were seen for cold-exposure injuries at Chicago emergency departments, according to the city’s Department of Public Health. 

The number on Saturday alone, 119, was almost four times more than the city expected. Nearly half of the patients were Black, which speaks to the unequal impact of weather hazards.

Cold-related health hazards are most acute for the elderly and those without access to consistent shelter. Rev. Shawna Bowman, executive director of Friendship Community Place, a neighborhood hub in Jefferson Park on the city’s Northwest Side, coordinated with volunteers to keep the space open as a warming center over the weekend and helped unhoused residents find safe places to spend the night. 

Bowman said it can be challenging for residents to know what resources are available and to travel to warming centers not in their neighborhood. The Northwest Side has “a real dearth of resources,” they added, and mutual-aid efforts like theirs are working to fill in the gaps.

Early Saturday evening, the community-run center had a handful of visitors, some eating instant ramen to warm up from the cold.

Ivon Ivans sat on a sofa near the entrance, preparing to go to a nearby church with her boyfriend, Miguel Martinez, for the night. Ivans has been homeless for three years and is on the waitlist for housing through the Chicago Housing Authority, she said. Martinez said he has been unhoused for about 20 years. 

Ivans said she has several chronic health conditions that are exacerbated by the cold, including cirrhosis of the liver and anemia. Martinez has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that flares up in the winter, making it harder for him to breathe. 

“It’s torturous,” Ivans said of the weather. 

Across the street from the community center, five people were taking refuge for the night at a police station—all of which are open 24 hours for shelter from the cold. 

Yvette Hausman and her fiancé, Nathan Watkins, who are both unhoused, sat on the floor of the station with blankets and some belongings. Hausman said she didn’t know the cold was coming, but that she was grateful for community members who mobilized quickly to provide and spread the word about impromptu warming resources.

“There has been a lot of warming centers that have popped up randomly,” Hausman said. “You just see the community come together.”

“The First Boots on the Ground”

It’s not yet clear how turmoil at FEMA under the Trump administration could be impacting response and recovery for the storm, but experts are concerned that delays in the allocation of funding, leadership upheaval and staffing cuts mean that the agency’s ability to function effectively during and after an emergency has been seriously constrained. FEMA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

“Certainly the dysfunction at FEMA over the past year is affecting any response that happens across the country,” said Samantha Montano, an associate professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and the author of the book “Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis.”

The Trump administration laid off or forced out more than 2,000 FEMA employees in 2025 and had planned to end the contracts for thousands more this year until Thursday, when the agency paused that effort amid preparation for the winter storm. More than 300 CORE, or Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees, had already been let go by that point. 

CORE workers are critical at FEMA, said Michael Coen, a former chief of staff at the agency. “These employees are usually the first boots on the ground,” he said.

The agency has struggled with leadership turnover and the departure of experienced senior staff; FEMA has cycled through three directors in the past year. The agency’s current leader, Karen Evans, lacks relevant experience, Coen said. 

Montano said rural parts of the country affected by a storm like this one typically need federal help more than urban areas. In places with smaller emergency management departments and fewer resources, “that extra support from the federal government is even more important,” she said.

Coen said he thought FEMA had done well so far coordinating with the states affected by the storm. “Hopefully the current Trump administration saw value in how FEMA coordinated and convened a meeting with 21 governors to talk about a national effort to ensure preparedness and how they would all respond together,” he said. Coen praised career staff at FEMA who have handled the response. 

But he’s worried about future disasters. The effects of climate change mean that the next large-scale weather event may not be far behind this one. The agency has not said whether it will resume contract non-renewals after this storm has passed. 

“FEMA is supposed to be ready for no-notice events. The current political leadership isn’t taking that into account, and they just react to storms as they happen,” Coen said. “For someone like me who has had a career in emergency management, that’s very troubling.”

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website:

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Most precipitation across the contiguous United States fell in association with a large, impactful storm system that affected a broad area from the southernmost Rockies and the southern Plains eastward across a large part of the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, the Southeast, and the Eastern Seaboard. Winter storm warnings at one point covered about one million square miles. Heavy to excessive amounts of snow, sleet, and freezing rain were widespread throughout the region. Numerous locations across Pennsylvania, New York, and New England recorded 1 to 2 feet of snow or snow and sleet. Elsewhere, totals reached as high as 17 inches in Ohio and West Virginia; 15 inches in Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana; and 1 foot in Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Intense sleet fell farther south, overlapping the southern sections of the heavy snow area. Sleet totals topped out near 7 inches in Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina; near or slightly over 6 inches fell on scattered sites across Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Maryland; and localized amounts reached 4 inches in Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Virginia. Freezing rain fell in abundance across portions of the South, and in some areas that experienced a changeover from sleet. States with at least one site reporting 1 inch thick ice accumulation included Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina while peak amounts of 0.7 to 0.8 inch were reported in Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and West Virginia. Widespread power outages and tree damage was reported in many locations that received heavy freezing rain. Liquid-equivalent precipitation totals associated with this system exceeded an inch in parts of the southernmost Rockies, in a band from eastern Texas and western Arkansas eastward through Alabama, most of Tennessee and Kentucky, the central and northern Virginias, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and in scattered locations across adjacent areas, including the Northeast. Scattered areas across the southern tier of the Lower-48 recorded over 3 inches of precipitation, including central Texas, southern Louisiana and adjacent Texas, and a fairly solid band from northeastern Texas through northern Louisiana, northern Mississippi, and northwestern Alabama. Up to 10 inches fell on one patch in southwestern Louisiana, and localized amounts exceeded 4 inches in northern Mississippi and a few other scattered areas.

However, despite the extensive coverage of impactful precipitation, the storm has not yet brought about broad areas of drought relief. Improvements were made where some of the heaviest liquid-equivalent precipitation fell, including a few places where it fell in frozen form. However, Arctic air has settled into the eastern states in the wake of the storm, and in many if not most areas, the water that could eventually help ease drought conditions was locked up in accumulated frozen precipitation, and can’t provide tangible improvements to drought impacts until it has melted. In the South, this may be only a matter of a few days, and relief was depicted more quickly there than farther north, especially in the northern tier of the East where temperatures may remain below freezing for extended periods of time.

Along the northwestern and southeastern edges of the winter storm, light to moderate precipitation was recorded, with totals ranging from a few tenths to nearly an inch over the western half of Texas and from much of Oklahoma northeastward through most of Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and the upper reaches of the Northeast. Similar amounts were noted to the south of the heaviest precipitation, generally across portions of the Carolinas, southeastern Georgia, Florida, and the immediate central Gulf Coast.

In other parts of the Lower-48, very little if any precipitation was recorded. The single widespread and extremely impactful winter storm was responsible for almost all of the precipitation observed this week…

High Plains

Most of the High Plains Region was dry last week, with an amounts of a few tenths to approaching one inch fell on much of central and eastern Kansas and on scattered higher elevations in Colorado and Wyoming. Otherwise, little or nothing fell. The Region – outside the higher elevations – is climatologically cold and dry, so precipitation deficits increase very slowly, and demand is lower this time of year. Dryness and drought was essentially unchanged in most of the High Plains Region, with some scattered deterioration introduced in parts of western Colorado (to D1 or D2). Drought intensification was also introduced around the Black Hills and adjacent western South Dakota (to D0 or D1), where snowpack is deficient and slowly declining…

West

The southern fringe of the West Region was impacted by the western edge of the winter storm, resulting in over 1.5 inches of precipitation across a few patches from southeastern Arizona across southern New Mexico. Amounts exceeded 3 inches in parts of south-central New Mexico north of the Texas Big Bend. The precipitation fell mostly in liquid form in southeastern Arizona, and was sufficient to bring improvements into that area. Farther east, although amounts were a little heavier, the precipitation was primarily in frozen form, and remained unmelted. Therefore, only a few targeted improvements were introduced in a few small areas reporting the highest precipitation amounts (over 3 inches). Elsewhere, most of the Region received no measurable precipitation, with just a few tenths falling on some of the higher elevations of the Rockies. Still, there was no tangible deterioration across the Region during the dry week, in part because it followed a few weeks of relatively abundant precipitation. As a result, the Drought Monitor depiction was unchanged outside parts of the southern fringes of Arizona and New Mexico…

South

One to several inches of precipitation was widespread across most of Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, central and southern Arkansas, the eastern Texas. Improvements were introduced in a number of areas, generally the areas that received the most precipitation, where much of the precipitation fell in liquid form, or where drought was already waning. To wit, some relatively broad improvements were introduced in Tennessee and to a lesser extent Mississippi. Farther west, where subnormal precipitation dates back at least several months, improvements were more targeted to the areas receiving the heaviest precipitation, especially from central Louisiana northward where precipitation remained unmelted. Despite the precipitation accompanying the massive winter storm, Many areas in a band from northern Arkansas to the Louisiana Gulf Coast recorded 8 to 10 inches less than normal precipitation over the past 90 days, with a few spots in northeastern Arkansas and east-central Louisiana recording deficits approaching 12 inches during this period. Farther west, moderate to heavy precipitation was fairly widespread in eastern Texas, with lesser amounts toward the central part of the state. Southeastern Oklahoma reported amounts similar to eastern Texas (1.5 to locally 3.0 inches), but most areas farther northwest recorded less than an inch. With much of the precipitation remaining locked up in frozen form, only a few surgical improvements were introduced in the areas with the most extreme totals in eastern Texas. A few inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation also fell farther southwest over south-central Texas. Temperatures were above freezing there at the end of the period, and the environment was beginning to respond to the moisture infusion, so somewhat more aggressive improvements were introduced there…

Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Ali Longwell):

January 25, 2026

During a Jan. 22 Water Conditions Monitoring Committee, Brian Domonkos, the Colorado snow survey supervisor for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, reported that the best snowpack conditions in Colorado, in the Rio Grande basin, still rank as the fourth worst in the last 40 years on record.  Statewide snowpack and snowpack in the Colorado River Headwaters basin are both at record lows for the period on record, Domonkos reported.

“At this point in the year, we are 51% of the way through the winter or the snowpack accumulation season,” Domonkos said. “There’s a very, very small chance that we could get back to normal at this point.”

“We have 4.8 inches of water content on average across all of our snow measuring sites in Colorado,” Domonkos said. “Typically, at this point in the year, we have about 8.5 inches of water content (in the snowpack).” 

While it’s a bit early to look at predictions for the spring runoff, “it’s very likely that we’ll wind up seeing below normal runoff projections this year,” Domonkos said. 

For Colorado to end the winter with a normal amount of snowpack, the state “needs about 145% of normal snow accumulation,” he said, adding that this is “close to needing the maximum amount of snow accumulation that we’ve ever seen in the last 40 years in order to get back to normal.” 

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (John Aquilar and John Meyer). Here’s an excerpt:

July 25, 2026

The warm, snow-free weather that many in the city have enjoyed for weeks — extending the active season for cyclists, hikers and runners — is bringing less joy to the high country, where the nearly $5 billion-a-year Colorado ski industry is struggling to salvage its season…Colorado just clocked its warmest December since records started being kept in 1895, while Denver had its second-warmest final month of the year. The city broke daily temperature records seven times last month, including on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It also documented 21 days where the average temperature was more than 6 degrees above normal, according to the National Weather Service. The balmy days have extended into 2026, with Jan. 4 setting a new high-temperature recordof 67 degrees for metro Denver for that date.

“What makes this year so unusual is it’s been so warm for so long,” said [Russ] Schumacher, who is also a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University…

The reasons behind the rise in temperatures and the increase in dryness are fiercely debated, with a mix of focus on the impacts coming from global climate change and those that are attributable to the weather variability that has long shaped what is experienced on the ground. Globally, the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the last decade, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The same group determined that the global average concentration of carbon dioxide in 2024 surged to the highest level since modern measurements began in 1957…According to a series of scientific studies published last year and collated by the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, researchers determined that climate change is complicit in the drying and warming of the American Southwest. The studies found emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are driving an ongoing 25-year shortfall in winter rains and mountain snows across the region. Dryness has accompanied the elevated temperatures felt by Coloradans this fall and winter, with the state tallying its 34th-driest December in 130 years of record-keeping, according to the Colorado Climate Center. Much of the state is in some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, though a broad swath of the Eastern Plains is not. Denver had its second-latest first accumulating snow — on Nov. 29. As of Thursday, mountain snowpack was at 56% of the median for that date, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Water and Climate Center. The snowpack was well below the lowest level recorded at this point in the season in records that go back to 1987…

Jason Ullmann, the state engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources, said that despite the recent dry conditions, water storage levels across the state were in pretty good shape.

“We’re in an OK position with reservoir storage on average statewide,” he said.

But Ullmann noted that if things didn’t ramp up significantly on the storm front over the next two months or so, a different conversation could be in the offing by spring.

“It’s not time for panic — there is time for it to improve,” he said. “One of our snowiest months, March, is still to come.”

I’m having trouble accessing the SNOTEL basin-filled maps this morning and also the Yampa-White-Little Snake and State of Colorado SWE Interactive graph. I will try to update this post if things clear up in time. (Technology is great when it works!)