How much snow the mountains of Whatcom County held each
spring, and how the glaciers have changed.
Snow on April 1, each year
April 1 is when the snowpack is usually near its deepest. Each bar is the total snow at the
county's automated stations measured that year, as a percent of their total normal (100% = a typical year).
Fewer stations reported in the early years.
Snow stations and glaciers
Each dot is a snow station, colored by its April 1 snow that year (darker = more, compared
with normal). Tap a station for its record.
One station's record
Glaciers then and now
Why snow matters down here
Snow and glaciers are the mountains' water storage. Melting slowly through spring and summer, they keep
rivers cool and flowing when rain is scarce, which matters for salmon, farms and towns. A study with the
Nooksack Indian Tribe found that during summer heat waves (2013–2021), flow in the glacier-fed North Fork of the
Nooksack rose by about a quarter while the rain-fed South Fork fell by about a fifth
(Columbia Climate School, 2022).
Winter storms are the other side: rain falling on snow can feed the floods on the
Floods page.
For a sense of how much snow can fall up high: the Mt. Baker Ski Area recorded 1,140 inches in the
1998–99 season, which it reports as a world record verified by NOAA
(Mt. Baker Ski Area).
Reading this page
Snow is measured as water. "Snow water equivalent" is the depth of water you'd get by
melting the snowpack, in inches.
Normal is NRCS's 1991–2020 median for each station on that date (estimated by NRCS for
stations newer than 1991). Where the normal is under 8 inches, percentages swing wildly on a few inches, so those
stations are shown in inches only.
April 1 is a convention. High stations usually keep building snow into mid-April or May; low
ones often peak in March. A low April 1 at low stations can mean a warm winter (rain instead of snow), not a dry one.
Two kinds of stations. Automated SNOTEL stations report every day; snow courses are
measured by hand near the end of March, some since the 1940s. Both are public USDA sites.
Glacier outlines come from different methods and dates: mid-century USGS topographic maps
(photos from the 1950s to the 1980s) and mostly 2015 aerial imagery. They include perennial snowfields. Small differences
are within the error of the comparison; large ones are real.