Snowpack across nearly a dozen Utah basins peaked at levels below what was previously the region’s record low, showcasing how every part of the state struggled to collect snow this season.
Utah’s statewide snowpack peaked at 8.3 inches of snow water equivalent during the second week of March, nearly 2 inches below the previous record since the Natural Resources Conservation Service began tracking snowpack daily in the 1980s. That’s the amount of water within freshly fallen snow, which accounts for approximately 95% of the state’s water supply.
The agency also reported last week that Utah’s statewide figure entered April at its lowest point since statewide snowpack was first tracked in 1930.
Utah’s Bear River basin ultimately led the state in snowpack collection in both total and percentage of normal among its 15 primary basins, but its peak of 12.7 inches of snow water equivalent still fell 66% of its median average. Duchesne’s, at 61%, was the only other basin with a collection above 60%, according to a KSL review of federal data.
None were as bad as Lower Sevier’s 3.9 inches, which ended up at 25% of median average. Its collection was its lowest since the 1980s, but collections within the Beaver, Dirty Devil, Price-San Rafael, Provo-Utah Lake-Jordan, San Pitch, southeastern Utah, Tooele Valley-Vernon Creek, Upper Sevier and Weber-Ogden basins also broke their own records.
Lower Sevier fell into record-low levels in December and remained there the rest of the season, while others, like the Tooele Valley-Vernon Creek basin, entered record low in mid-January and never escaped it. The Deep Creek and Raft basins also struggled this year, though neither factor much in the state’s water supply.
“During March, Utah’s snowpack deteriorated from borderline record-poor conditions to completely unchartered territory,” wrote Jordan Clayton, a hydrologist for the Conservation Service, in an update about the snowpack on Tuesday, adding that “the rate of snow water equivalent loss was faster than ever before observed for the month of March.”
Utah's 2026 snowpack by basin
KSL analyzed Natural Resources Conservation Service data collected from Utah's 15 biggest snowpack basins during the 2025-2026 winter.
Each basin is ranked in order of how it compares to its "normal," which is the median peak total from 1991 to 2020. An asterisk represents a record-low total since the modern daily tracking era began in the 1980s.
- Bear River: 12.7 inches (66% of median average)
- Duchesne: 8.5 inches (61% of median average)
- Northeastern Uintas: 6.8 inches (58% of median average)
- Escalante-Paria: 5.5 inches (58% of median average)
- Southwestern Utah: 6.5 inches (56% of median average)
- *Weber-Ogden: 10.6 inches (50% of median average)
- *Provo-Utah Lake-Jordan: 10.1 inches (50% of median average)
- *Southeastern Utah: 5.1 inches (47% of median average)
- *Beaver: 7.2 inches (46% of median average)
- *Price-San Rafael: 6.5 inches (44% of median average)
- *Upper Sevier: 6 inches (43% of median average)
- *San Pitch: 6.2 inches (42% of median average)
- *Dirty Devil: 4.2 inches (41% of median average)
- *Tooele Valley-Vernon Creek: 6.6 inches (38% of median average)
- *Lower Sevier: 3.9 inches (25% of median average)
How temperatures factored
Experts point to temperature as a key reason for Utah’s snowpack woes. Utah’s statewide snowpack peaked at approximately 52% of normal even when precipitation totals at the same mountain sites remained 87% of normal during the first half of the water year, largely because above-average temperatures created more rain in areas that typically collect snow in the winter.
Utah’s average temperature between Oct. 1 and March 31 was 42.7 degrees, nearly 3 degrees above the previous record and 7 degrees above the average between 1991 and 2020, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information update released on Wednesday.
It topped 1934 and 2015, which are second and third in warmth. All three years are also the bottom three in statewide snowpack since levels were first tracked in 1930.
Last month was an exclamation point on this trend, adding a new snowpack challenge. Utah’s 51.1-degree statewide average temperature in March ended up 5.5 degrees above the previous record, and nearly 11 degrees above the 30-year average. Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of Utah’s peak collection melted by the end of the month.
Again, no region was spared. All 29 counties reported their warmest first six months of a water year since at least 1895. Every county experienced March temperatures that were 10 to 15 degrees above their 20th-century average.
Four basins within central and southern Utah ran out of trackable snowpack before the end of the month, the first time that’s ever been recorded since daily tracking began in the 1980s. Many of those basins hadn’t run out of snow until at least mid-April in history.
That will likely create many water challenges this summer, while extreme drought now consumes over half of the state.
“Water users should anticipate the strong likelihood that runoff generation from this year’s snowpack will be very poor and may break records in some locations,” Clayton wrote. “All areas of the state except for the Bear (River) watershed are projected to have below normal water supply conditions.”