Colorado Officially Had Its Worst Snowpack Ever

April 6, 2026

The Colorado Climate Center’s Russ Schumacher just declared something nobody in the state was surprised to learn last week. In a Colorado State University climate blog, the climatologist says this past winter created “the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history.”

Record high temperatures played one of the biggest roles in the Centennial State’s end-of-winter status, which was the case in California’s April 1 snowpack reports as well. Schumacher shared an image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to illustrate his point, in which you can see several counties throughout the state experienced more than seven days or more of temperatures warmer than any March high recorded between 1951 and 2025. Those record highs, of course, fueled a massive melt off occurring far earlier in the year than is typical.

“Amid the record-shattering heat in the second half of March, statewide snowpack declined by nearly five inches. Previously, the fastest decline in a 2-week period before April 1 was 2.3″ in 2012, one of the worst years for spring snowpack. Only two times has the SWE dropped by more than five inches in two weeks before the end of April, in 1987 and 1989 which were both years with above-average peaks that started melting on the early side,” he wrote. THE Inertia