Oregon's snowpack hit the zero percentile in February. Not low. The lowest ever measured. Across the Columbia Basin, snow water equivalent sits at the second percentile, and peak snowpack has already passed. The deficit is unrecoverable.
What unfolds from here touches everything the snow was quietly holding together. Jim Willard, who grows wine grapes and apples near Prosser, Washington, has already abandoned a block of Malbec to dry up. His missing irrigation water is the same missing snowpack that will warm salmon rivers, cut hydropower output, and dry out forest fuels weeks early. Kelli Bumbaco at the Washington State Climatologist's office has been blunt: low snowpack stretches the fire window on both ends. The Yakima Valley's junior water right holders face 44 percent of normal supply. Central Oregon's North Unit Irrigation District hasn't delivered a full allotment since 2018.
One snowpack number. A dozen systems failing in sequence.