We live near the snowiest place on the planet. That's not just a saying - by measure, Heather Meadows, near the Mount Baker ski area in Washington, gets more snow than any other weather station anywhere. Typically we get 800'+ inches of snow.
Just not this winter just past.
In the image above, you see a popular backcountry ski run that is usually in through at least the middle of July. In late May, it was already discontinuous.
In the basin in the bottom right is an area that I thought was a permanent snowfield all year around, every year. It's a completely melted boulder field as of the end of May.
On a typical June or early July day, we start skiing up from the parking lot at Heather Meadows while the road up to Artist Point is still covered in 10 to 20 feet of snow. On May 31 of this year, I started up at Artist Point (already cleared, 2 months early) and walked a mile to the first continuous snow.
For the pic below I was standing near where the Cross Country leg of the Ski to Sea normally runs on Memorial Day Sunday, just a week before. Each year, five hundred skiers zoom along on a course near this spot.
This year, the two skiing legs were replaced with Mountain Run and Mountain Bike legs.
Below, a forlorn backcountry skier hopes to find some snow.
The boulder below might typically emerge from the snow some time in July.
A look back along Table Mountain. I have routinely skied this on continuous snow in June and early July. Usually June and July are the easy months - for people who ski every month (this was my 91st month in a row skiing), the tough months are August and September. This summer there will be some very long walks to the snow.
The snow in this area is an important source for year-round flow in our rivers, providing flow that sustains salmon runs and other important habitats. This year, snowmelt will be very lean, and stream flows are expected to be far below normal.
No single event, or no single season, can be directly pinned on global warming. But this stunningly unusual winter, and the low-flow summer that is on the way, are a reasonable preview of the normal we should reasonably expect within a few decades.