Mt. Rainier is on track to hit the lowest 10th percentile for snow accumulation this year

I started looking into this in January after our two week run of dry weather. February has not been much better, and we are still lagging quite far behind the average. Projecting this years accumulation of Snow Water Equivalent puts the expected max at around 40 inches. This would be the lowest 10th percentile based on NWRFC’s 30 year data for the Paradise station at Mt. Rainier. I’m still holding out hope for some big March and April storms, but it is rough out there! I hope this info can help people to contextualize our snowfall this year. It’s once in ten years bad, but not unprecedented.

Edit: It looks like I mislabeled my water years. I didn’t realize the convention is to use the year the data ends, and I used the year it begins.

Methods:

• Data source: NOAA National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center, National Snow Analysis
• NOAA Station AFSW1 – Paradise, 2011-2026, Modeled Snow Water Equivalent
• Projections are calculated by adding the 20th, 50th, and 80th percentiles of additional SWE after the report date