Was This Tahoe’s Worst Snow Season Ever Recorded?

The numbers are in, and they paint a bleak picture for the Lake Tahoe region’s 2025-26 winter.

As of April 1, snowpack in the Tahoe Basin sat at just 17% of average, a figure that has analysts and longtime skiers asking whether this past season goes down as the worst on record. Historical comparisons are making the rounds, and even the notoriously bad 2015 season had more snow at the same point in the year. That’s a difficult benchmark to fall short of.

The implications stretch well beyond ski resorts. Snowpack is the Sierra Nevada’s savings account, slowly releasing water into rivers and reservoirs through spring and summer. When that account runs low, the effects ripple outward, affecting water supplies, hydroelectric power generation, wildfire risk, and the health of fish populations that depend on cold, consistent stream flows.

For the outdoor recreation community around Tahoe, the thin snowpack also compressed the ski season significantly. Resorts operated on reduced terrain for much of the winter, and early closures became the norm rather than the exception across the basin.

The good news, if there is any, is that a handful of late storms did push some fresh snow onto higher elevations in recent weeks. Heavenly Mountain Resort is actually reopening its lifts this weekend, giving skiers one final chance to log some turns before summer officially takes hold.

But one weekend of skiing doesn’t rewrite a historically poor winter. The 2025-26 season will be remembered as a tough one for Tahoe, and water managers across the region are already planning around the consequences.