As Washington’s current snowpack conditions become worse than last year, a statewide drought emergency has been declared. It’s the fourth drought emergency for the state in as many years.
According to Casey Sixkiller, director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, “widespread shortages and challenges across our state” are expected.
The Washington State Department of Ecology declared a drought emergency on April 8, 2026. It’s the fourth year in a row that the state had declared a drought emergency.
Courtesy of Washington State Department of Ecology
“Going into April with half of our usual snowpack is alarming,” Sixkiller said. “… Issuing a drought emergency now helps water users prepare for what is likely to be a very difficult summer. This is becoming an all-too-common experience and is another example of how climate change is visibly reshaping our landscape.”
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The Department of Ecology declared the drought emergency on April 8. Above normal temperatures and below normal rain is expected through June. A declaration like this is called for when the state has less than 75% of its normal water supply. The official emergency allows the state to distribute $3 million in grants and speed up water right permits.
Ecology notes that Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett anticipated a drought this year and began planning for one over the past winter. Therefore, they do not expect to be impacted by the drought. Other parts of the state may face challenges, however.
The news might sound odd to Washingtonians after the region saw 104% of normal precipitation between October 2025 and February 2026. The winter, however, was quite warm and most of that precipitation fell as rain, not as snow in the mountains. That contributed to severe downstream flooding in December. The ocean got most of the water that Washington usually saves as snow in the mountains.
Mountain snow is important for Washington. It’s where the water supply is built up over winter and stored. It melts in the summer, sending water down rivers and streams for use throughout the state. Less mountain snow means less summer water for hydropower production, agriculture, fish and wildlife.
“After our warmest December on record, we finally began to build snowpack in early January before an extended mid-winter dry spell through early March stopped snow accumulation in its tracks,” said Karin Bumbaco, deputy state climatologist with the Washington State Climate Office.
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“Even the heavy snowfall in mid-March was not enough to make up multiple months of poor snowpack growth, and early spring warmth has melted much of those gains,” she said. “The weather progression this winter has lined up to deliver very challenging conditions going into spring and summer.”
According to the Department of Ecology, 2026 snowpack levels in Washington’s mountains are worse than in 2025, when anxieties over low snow began to rise. Since 2015, four statewide drought emergencies have been declared in Washington, and there have been droughts in parts of the state in seven of the past 10 years.
Back in the 1990s, such droughts happened once every five years, according to Ecology. Now, they’re showing up about four out of every 10 years. By the year 2050, the state expects droughts to occur every seven out of 10 years.
Dyer Oxley is a reporter at KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.
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Soo Yon Ryu, assistant professor of business administration at Washington and Lee University, recently published a research article in the Journal of Advertising.
Ryu’s paper, “Simple is Eco-Friendly but Complex is Effective: Inferences from Visual Complexity in Package Design,” found that people interpret the complexity of a product’s packaging as a cue for both environmental friendliness and product effectiveness. Consumers tend to prefer simple package designs when eco-friendliness is important, as less complex designs signal lower resource use. Conversely, they favor more elaborate designs when they focus on product effectiveness, interpreting complexity as a sign of higher quality or stronger performance.
The research’s findings offer managers valuable insight on how strategically adjusting the visual complexity of product packages can influence consumer perception.
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Ryu is in her first year as a faculty member at W&L. She earned a dual bachelor’s degree in business administration and culture & design management from Yonsei University (South Korea), a Master of Arts in art management from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Florida, where she was recognized with the Warrington College of Business Ph.D. Teaching Award and a Marketing Science Institute Research Grant.
If you know a W&L faculty member who has done great, accolade-worthy things, tell us about them! Nominate them for an accolade.
1) Evgeni Malkin has 82 points (27G-55A) in 67 career games against the Capitals. It’s the third-most points he’s scored against any one team.
2) Defenseman Sam Girard has five points (5A) and is plus-7 in his last seven games. Only three players have a better plus/minus than him (+7) since Mar. 30.
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3) Since March 22, no player in the league has more goals than Rickard Rakell (10).
4) Elmer Soderblom has seven points (3G-4A) over his last eight games. He has nine points (4G-5A) in 18 games with Pittsburgh after recording three points (2G-1A) over 39 games with Detroit this year.
5) Egor Chinakhov has 21 points (8G-14A) over his last 19 games and has picked up 36 points (18G-18A) in 42 games since joining the Penguins. Since his Penguins debut on Jan. 1, only Rickard Rakell (20) has more goals than him on the team.
The Justice Department (DOJ) is asking a federal judge in Virginia to allow it to conduct its own search of a Washington Post reporter’s seized electronic devices, rather than have the court do the review.
Federal prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in a March 31 court filing to overturn a lower court ruling that prohibited the DOJ from using a “filter team” to search reporter Hannah Natanson’s phone and laptop as part of an FBI investigation into a government contractor accused of leaking classified material.
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Magistrate Judge William Porter ordered in February that the government could not “open, access, review, or otherwise examine” any of Natanson’s “seized data,” instead authorizing an independent judicial review.
“Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well-chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product—most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources—is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote.
Federal prosecutors have pushed back, arguing that Porter’s order infringes on the separation of powers by shifting an executive branch function into a judicial one.
They also asserted that it could compromise the neutrality courts are meant to maintain in overseeing search warrants and related proceedings.
“That principle is even more important here because the search authorized by this warrant involves the identification and seizure of classified national defense information, a responsibility the law entrusts to the Executive’s expertise,” federal prosecutors wrote.
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The case stems from an FBI search of Natanson’s home in January, in which agents took two laptops, a cellphone and a Garmin watch belonging to the journalist, who had been reporting on the Trump administration’s effort to trim government spending and cuts to the federal workforce.
The search was conducted in connection with a government system administrator in Maryland, who is now behind bars, according to the DOJ.
Attorneys for the Post have contended that the warrant and subsequent search were an example of federal overreach and violated First Amendment press protections.
“The government should not receive permission to rummage through a reporter’s professional universe,” Simon Latcovich said during a Thursday hearing, according to The Post.
The newspaper reported that Trenga, appointed by former President George W. Bush, said he would “get a decision shortly” but seemed skeptical that Porter’s ruling would hamper the DOJ’s ability to build its case against the contractor.
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