Cliff Mass: No need for drought panic — snowpack melted week early

While the snowpack measurements from April have many people alarmed over a summer drought in Washington, University of Washington Atmospheric Science Professor Cliff Mass urges everyone not to panic just yet.

The lower-than-normal snowpack helped prompt Governor Jay Inslee to declare a drought emergency for almost half of the state.

But Mass said on his blog that it’s “not very serious” — it’s all just a matter of timing.

The snowpack on April 1 was about 75 to 80 percent of normal, Mass told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson. The April 1 snowpack measurement, when the snow tends to be at its deepest, is typically relied upon as the predictor of a summer drought. However, things were a little different in the Cascades this year, as Mass wrote.

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“We had that warm period at the end of March and into April, and then we had another one at the end of April,” Mass said. “So we had a little bit of warmer than normal temperatures that caused the snowpack to melt out a little earlier. So instead of melting at the normal time, it melted out a week before.”

This is typical for an El Nino year, he added.

Mass pointed out that nearly every major river and lake across that state has “plenty of water,” so there’s no reason to fear a lack of drinking water. The Yakima River reservoir, he said, is 90 percent full.

“There’s a lot of deceptive talk about this terrible snowpack, but it’s only because it was melting out just a week or two earlier than normal,” he said.

Early projections are actually showing a damper summer on the horizon.

“There’s no reason at this point to expect a very, very dry summer,” he said.

Furthermore, he said, even if things were a bit drier than average, it wouldn’t be too different from Washington’s typical summers.

“We have a Mediterranean climate with very dry summers, normally,” he said.

A Seattle Times article stated that the summer would be drier than average, raising the likelihood of a drought, among other problems. Nick Bond, the state climatologist, was quoted as the source for this information.

However, Mass said that Bond told him that he was misquoted.

“That was clearly an error,” Mass said. “That headline was wrong.”