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A tale of two Wyoming winters

So far, winter 2025-’26 has been an odd one: unseasonably warm and dry along Wyoming’s valley floors, but snowy in the western mountains.

by Mike Koshmrl 3 hours ago

Wet and shivering Mary the pudelpointer basks in the winter sun along the shoreline of 5,800-foot-high Bull Lake on Jan. 19, 2025. Warm weather and windy conditions have kept the east slope Wind River Range reservoir mostly open during what’s usually a cold, ice-capped time of year. (Jordan Schreiber)

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Mary the pudelpointer hadn’t jumped in open water in months, but on Monday took advantage of an ice-free Bull Lake while her humans were unsuccessfully angling.

Less than a year old and still relatively stupid, the sleek black pup persistently shivered in the hours that followed and perhaps regretted her decisions.

But Mary was lucky in one regard: She got to make a choice about going swimming in late January in western Wyoming. At low elevations, the Equality State is experiencing its most snow-free and ice-free winter in 17 years — a timespan that exceeds most dogs’ lives.

“2009 was the last year that the non-mountainous areas were this bare,” Wyoming State Climatologist Tony Bergatino told WyoFile in an email.

Although the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Bighorn Range have near-average snowpacks as of late January, non-mountainous parts of Wyoming haven’t been this bare in nearly two decades. (Wyoming State Climate Office)

This winter’s snowpack is shaping up to be about the opposite of the “inverted” snowpack from winter 2022-’23, Bergatino said. That year, an especially deadly one for wildlife, the valley floors in southern Wyoming and into the Wind River Basin held “massive” amounts of snow, he said.

Now it’s nowhere to be seen. The overwhelming majority of low-lying areas in the state have a snowpack that’s less than 5% of normal, Wyoming State Climate Office maps show.

The mountains are an exception.

A group of Lander residents, flanked by Sota the pudelpointer, putter around on cross-country skis at Togwotee Pass’ Deception Creek on Jan. 17, 2025. Although just 55 miles from Bull Lake, the trail network is nearly 3,000 feet higher and the snowpack high in the watershed is heftier than the norm for this point in the winter. (Jordan Schreiber)

Just two days before Mary’s frigid swim, she romped down groomed, frozen trails while her humans cross-country skied on Togwotee Pass.

The snowpack in the western mountains is “pretty good,” Natural Resources Conservation Service Hydrologist Jeff Coyle said. Elsewhere in Wyoming’s high country, it’s more marginal.

The Wind River Basin, where Mary swam and romped, even has an above-average snowpack, at 112% of the long-term median, SNOTEL data shows.

Walking in a windy wonderland

Wyoming smashes December heat records. Seasonal snow reports mixed.

In terms of water supply come next summer, the high elevations are “really where the snow counts,” Bergatino said.

There are some pitfalls to a complete lack of low-elevation snowpack, though. Typically, snow helps insulate the ground, mitigating deep freezes, according to Bergatino. No snow also increases the likelihood of the soil drying more — and it’s already quite parched.

Mike Koshmrl

Mike Koshmrl reports on Wyoming's wildlife and natural resources. Prior to joining WyoFile, he spent nearly a decade covering the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s wild places and creatures for the Jackson... More by Mike Koshmrl

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