Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared drought Monday for nearly half of Washington watersheds, as the mountain snowpack that churns through hydropower dams, irrigates our state's orchards and provides for fish continues to dwindle well below normal.
Twenty days into May, "our statewide snowpack is the fourth-lowest it's been over the past 30 years," said Jeff Marti, the drought coordinator for the Washington Department of Ecology.
Winter left many areas of the state with lower-than-normal snowpack. A hot, dry spring quickly zapped much of the snow that did accumulate.
The water-shortage forecast is serious, Marti said, but not as dire as what played out in 2015, a year of historically low snowpack. That year, harmful algal blooms closed fisheries, salmon died en masse in too-warm streams and agricultural losses exceeded $633 million, according to a federal report billing 2015 as a possible glimpse of our climate future.