Pacific Northwest Water Year 2025 Impacts Assessment

The purpose of the Pacific Northwest Water Year 2025 Impacts Assessment is to connect the water year conditions to sector-specific impacts to inform planning, response actions, and technical and scientific information needs. Ultimately, the assessment can be used as a resource for future management of drought and other climate extremes. 

The authors gathered the information presented in this assessment in three main ways. First, they participated in a regional Pacific Northwest (PNW) Water Summit in place of separate annual Water Year Recap and Outlook meetings in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The PNW Water Summit shared some objectives with the previous Water Year Recap and Outlook meetings, including summarizing the climate during the previous water year and reviewing climate and weather-related impacts of drought and other climate extremes on various sectors. Second, they distributed the Annual PNW Water Year Impacts Survey broadly across potentially impacted sectors. Third, they collected Condition Monitoring Reports from Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) volunteers and Condition Monitoring Observer Reports (CMOR) submitted to the National Drought Mitigation Center during the 2025 Water Year.

The assessment primarily reflects the information from the meeting discussions, survey responses, and the authors’ expertise. The authors focused on rapid snow accumulation in late December, a much drier than normal January, a severely dry spring and rapid snowmelt in several watersheds, and warmer than normal temperatures from July through September.

This report was a collaboration between the Washington State Climate Office, University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, Oregon Climate Service, Idaho Department of Water Resources, and NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System.

This is the sixth annual assessment. View the 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Pacific Northwest Water Year Impacts Assessments.