Colorado might not be having a blockbuster snow year, but the state remains better off than much of the western United States, according to the National Weather Service.

Throughout the state of Colorado, snowpack is generally about 60-70% percent of average, with no one region trending much better than the other, National Weather Service Forecaster David Barjenbruch said Tuesday, Dec. 2. That lands this snow year in the 8th percentile for the state’s historic records, according to historic weather data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, snowpack conditions in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains are only about 20-30% of normal, Barjenbruch said. That remains true almost all the way up the West Coast into the mountains of Oregon and Washington, he said.

Landlocked states are faring a bit better than the coast, but snowpack conditions continue to trend further behind average than in Colorado. While some parts of Utah are doing slightly better, in Idaho and Nevada, snowpack lingers at about 50-60% of normal, Barjenbruch said.

“So it’s been a pretty thin snowpack in the western U.S. overall this year,” Barjenbruch said. “The big concern is if this pattern lingers through much of the winter then we’ll end up with drier than normal conditions through the spring months.”

Throughout Colorado, precipitation remained at or below normal in 2023, Barjenbruch said. Though Colorado was briefly drought-free in July for the first time since 2019, drought has returned more than half the state.

Southwest Colorado is experiencing the worst drought conditions, ranging from moderate to extreme drought, while abnormally dry conditions have crept into the northwest part of the state as well as Summit and Grand counties.

About 63% of the state is experiencing some level of drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

In parts of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the thin snowpack is a reflection of precipitation that remained about average through much of the year before tapering off in the past few months, Barjenbruch said.

“It has been so dry in the latter half of the year in Summit County,” Barjenbruch said. “We had a decent amount of precipitation throughout the year, nothing exceptional by far, but a little bit below normal for precipitation.”

National Weather Service hydrologist Aldis Strautins noted that in September, Dillon received just 0.65 inches of precipitation, less than half the average for the month. After coming just shy of average in October, the Colorado mountain town received ¾ of an inch of precipitation in November, a month that typically averages an inch of precipitation, and remained more than ¼ of an inch below average in December, Strautins said.

Nearby, Breckenridge trended just above normal in September and October, but that was quickly undercut by a dry November that saw only a half inch of precipitation, more than ¾ of an inch shy of the month’s inch average.

“That’s why we’re seeing that deficit in our snowpack,” Barjenbruch said, “because we haven’t been putting significant consistent snowfall on top of it. We’ve had storms then long periods of 7-plus days where we haven’t seen any precipitation at all in the mountains.”

In Colorado’s prime ski country in and around Summit County, about 2-3 inches of precipitation — the equivalent of 2-4 feet of snow in places above 9,000 feet — would be necessary to get back to normal, Barjenbruch said. 

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But long-term projections for the winter precipitation in Colorado are still in the near-normal range, Barjenbruch said. So, with the next week to 10 days expected to be a “little bit more active with frequent but generally light snows,” he said he is hopeful that precipitation levels can rebound.

But for that to happen, Barjenbruch said, “We’re going to have to change the weather patterns up, and have more significant storms come through the area.”