Another year, another drought emergency declared in Washington state 50%
By Dyer Oxley0%
4/8/2026, 8:03:17 PM
Topics: Climate
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Negativity Bias, and Anchoring Bias, with Recency Bias as the most egregious example at 20.1% saturation with 102 hits. Analysis detected 551 faulty-reasoning hits from 508 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50% and a BS Rank of 50% (8,533 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 50.70% of the article peer group.
As Washington's current snowpack conditions become worse than last year, a statewide drought emergency has been declared.
It's the fourth drought emergency for the state in as many years.
According to Casey Sixkiller, director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, "widespread shortages and challenges across our state" are expected.
"Going into April with half of our usual snowpack is alarming,” Sixkiller said.
"...
Issuing a drought emergency now helps water users prepare for what is likely to be a very difficult summer.
This is becoming an all-too-common experience and is another example of how climate change is visibly reshaping our landscape."
The Department of Ecology declared the drought emergency on April 8.
Above normal temperatures and below normal rain is expected through June.
A declaration like this is called for when the state has less than 75% of its normal water supply.
The official emergency allows the state to distribute $3 million in grants and speed up water right permits.
Ecology notes that Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett anticipated a drought this year and began planning for one over the past winter.
Therefore, they do not expect to be impacted by the drought.
Other parts of the state may face challenges, however.
The news might sound odd to Washingtonians after the region saw 104% of normal precipitation between October 2025 and February 2026.
The winter, however, was quite warm and most of that precipitation fell as rain, not as snow in the mountains.
That contributed to severe downstream flooding in December.
The ocean got most of the water that Washington usually saves as snow in the mountains.
Mountain snow is important for Washington.
It's where the water supply is built up over winter and stored.
It melts in the summer, sending water down rivers and streams for use throughout the state.
Less mountain snow means less summer water for hydropower production, agriculture, fish and wildlife.
“After our warmest December on record, we finally began to build snowpack in early January before an extended mid-winter dry spell through early March stopped snow accumulation in its tracks,” said Karin Bumbaco, deputy state climatologist with the Washington State Climate Office.
“Even the heavy snowfall in mid-March was not enough to make up multiple months of poor snowpack growth, and early spring warmth has melted much of those gains,” she said.
“The weather progression this winter has lined up to deliver very challenging conditions going into spring and summer.”
According to the Department of Ecology, 2026 snowpack levels in Washington's mountains are worse than in 2025, when anxieties over low snow began to rise.
Since 2015, four statewide drought emergencies have been declared in Washington, and there have been droughts in parts of the state in seven of the past 10 years.
Back in the 1990s, such droughts happened once every five years, according to Ecology.
Now, they're showing up about four out of every 10 years.
By the year 2050, the state expects droughts to occur every seven out of 10 years.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.