By Claire Barber , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: SEATTLE—In December 2025, torrential rains and catastrophic flooding hit western Washington. High precipitation levels, combined with the warmest December on record for the state, meant that many mountainous areas received rain rather than snow, leading to a deluge that broke through two levees and caused an estimated $182 million in damages to public infrastructure. The lack of snowpack also led to drought later in the summer of 2026. A draft legislative report and forecast , released this month by the Washington State Department of Ecology, reveals that changing precipitation patterns, like those seen in December 2025, are primed to leave their mark across the state as more snow falls as rain, particularly impacting eastern Washington—a reality that is far too familiar for agricultural communities in the region....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22072026/washington-state-winter-rains-leads-to-increased-dr...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/world/europe/switzerland-skiiing-alpine-villages-no-snow.html By Erika Solomon , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...As the planet warms, Europe has faced a bruising year of climate crises. In the summer, many regions suffered  severe drought  and  record heat . Already this year, some areas have seen the  highest-recorded  winter temperatures — so warm that many ski resorts could not even make snow. For Switzerland, whose glaciers and snowpack form a crucial storehouse for European water supplies, the effect has been especially alarming. The country is warming at more than  double the rate  of the global mean and its glaciers lost 6 percent of their volume in the last year alone, according to Swiss federal authorities and  a glacier monitoring group . The changes pose a risk to some parts of a Swiss ski industry that  by some estimates  generates around $5.5 billion a year. But in a country where nea...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-wildfires-affect-snow-in-the-american-west By  Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Fresh powder does more than support  winter sports . Snowmelt flows into streams, where it helps sustain  agriculture , supports natural ecosystems, and provides drinking water. But wildfires are threatening snowpacks, and research on wildfire’s impact on  snow water equivalent  generally focuses on localized areas, with varying methods and conflicting results. Now,  Giovando and Niemann   set about rectifying this situation with data from the  Snow Telemetry system, or SNOTEL , which uses automated sensors to measure snow depth and other aspects of weather at hundreds of sites around the western United States. The researchers compared 45 burned SNOTEL sites to similar unburned sites. They found that when burned regions were at their snowiest, they obtained, on average, 13% less water from snow than their unburned counte...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/02/17/skiing-snow-climate-change-olympics/ By Denise Hruby, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: OBERWÖLZ, Austria — At the Lachtal ski resort, high in the eastern Alps of Austria, skiers immediately pull out their phones after sliding off the chairlift — not to take selfies, but rather to snap pictures of the windmills that have become part of the mountainous vista. When the first windmills were built here in 2002, at about 7,290 feet, many tourists saw the massive blades as an eyesore. But as the wind park grew and expanded, so did skiers’ environmental conscience. Today, locals and tourists are proud to ski among the backdrop. “When I ride up with them and eavesdrop, they’re usually impressed,” says Rudolf Wiesnegger, who maintains the wind park and adjacent solar panels. “They comment that it’s great for the environment,” he says. ...Skiers and spectators have been flabbergasted by this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing. Just as t...

https://eos.org/features/how-the-ski-industry-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-climate-activism Source: By Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A cultural shift is underway to transform outdoor buffs into stalwarts for climate action. Will it come soon enough to save their sport?….

https://eos.org/agu-news/winters-melting-point Source: By Heather Goss , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Around the world, the seasonal snowpack is changing. Eos’s October issue looks at how we study winter weather, adapt to climate changes, and even fight for the snow we love.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/14/us/winter-storm-snow-ice.html Source: By   Rick Rojas   and   Marie Fazio , The New York Times. Excerpt: A coast-to-coast winter storm swept from Oregon and Washington to the Southeast on Sunday, part of a frigid weather pattern that created record low temperatures in Minnesota and a 100-vehicle traffic pileup in Texas and that is now producing dangerous conditions across much of the country because of heavy snowfall, perilous ice and dangerously low temperatures. The National Weather Service   said early Monday   that at least 150 million Americans were under ice or winter weather advisories. Hundreds of thousands of people were without power. ...300,000 customers in Oregon and 150,000 in Virginia were also without electricity ...Temperatures in parts of Oklahoma were 40 degrees lower than usual for this time of year, the National Weather Service said. The duration of the cold conditions is also unusual: Oklahoma may experi...

https://eos.org/articles/heres-what-your-favorite-ski-resort-may-look-like-in-2085 Source:    By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Ski seasons at many of North America’s western resorts might melt away by 2085 because of warming temperatures....

https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/ Source:   By American NOAA, Meteorological Society (AMS). Excerpt: The report, compiled by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, is based on contributions from scientists from around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice, and in space....

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/ancient-earth-froze-over-geologic-instant Source:   By Lucas Joel, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Earth’s ice is melting at a rapid clip today. But some scientists think that during several ancient episodes, the planet plunged into a deep freeze known as “Snowball Earth,” when ice sheets grew to cover almost the entire planet. However, the number of these episodes, their extent, and just how fast Earth turned into an ice cube have long been a mystery. Now, analysis of a newly discovered rock sequence in Ethiopia supports a Snowball Earth event some 717 million years ago and suggests it took place in mere thousands of years—the geologic equivalent of a cold snap. The new work, grounded in Earth’s rock record, means the Snowball Earth hypothesis is “hanging in there, big time,” says Carol Dehler, a geologist at Utah State University in Logan, who was not involved in the research. ...Maclennan and colleagues ventured to the small town of Samre, E...

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=190748&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click Source:   NSF Press Release 17-003 For Investigation:  7.3, 9.1 Excerpt: Can cloud seeding -- dispersing particles into the air with the aim of increasing precipitation -- increase snowfall? This week, a team of researchers began a cloud-seeding project in southwestern Idaho to answer that question. Cloud seeding is a process by which artificial ice nuclei, such as silver iodide particles, are released into clouds, either from the air or via ground-based generators. The Idaho project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and dubbed SNOWIE (Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds -- the Idaho Experiment), will run from January 7 to March 17 in and around the Payette Basin, 50 miles north of Boise. "Scientists are still uncertain about cloud seeding for increasing precipitation, despite ongoing operations around the globe," says Nick Anderson, program director...