By late May, the forests of eastern Oregon are usually still holding moisture from a slow spring snowmelt. This year, that moisture is already gone. Snowpack across the state’s major basins measured roughly one-third of average on April 1, the benchmark date used by federal hydrologists, and what little snow remained disappeared weeks ahead of the normal schedule. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Oregon snow survey tracks Snow Water Equivalent by basin, but the specific basins underlying the statewide figure have not been individually named in the primary sources reviewed here. Soils are parched, streams are dropping, and fire managers say the landscape looks more like mid-July than late spring.
Governor Tina Kotek responded in April by declaring drought emergencies in six eastern Oregon counties: Crook, Grant, Jackson, Jefferson, Morrow, and Wallowa. Those declarations brought the 2026 statewide total to nine counties under emergency drought status. The three counties that were already under drought emergency designation before the April declaration have not been identified in the primary sources reviewed here. In her announcement, Kotek tied the action directly to record-low snowpack and warned that wildfire risk across the affected region is already elevated.
A snowpack collapse with few precedents
Federal snow monitoring confirms just how severe the deficit is. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service reported that April 1 snowpack hit record lows in 2026 in Oregon and across much of the Western United States, with eastern Oregon among the hardest-hit areas. Whether the record-low designation applies to Oregon alone, the broader West, or both is not fully clarified in the available NRCS summaries. According to the agency’s Oregon snow survey, the snow season started late, peaked early, and then melted rapidly. That sequence pushes spring runoff forward by weeks, draining the moisture reserves that forests and watersheds depend on through summer.
The underlying cause is straightforward: winter 2025-2026 was both warmer and drier than normal across the Pacific Northwest. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information documented record or near-record warmth and below-average precipitation for the region during the winter months, though the specific NOAA climate report or product containing that finding has not been identified in the sources reviewed here. Warmer temperatures meant more precipitation fell as rain instead of snow at mid-elevations, and what snow did accumulate melted faster at higher elevations. The Oregon Water Resources Department has noted that this combination, less snow plus faster melt, translates directly into earlier onset of critically low summer streamflows.
For context, the last time Oregon faced a comparable convergence of heat and drought heading into fire season was 2020. That September, a historic windstorm drove wildfires across more than one million acres in a single week, destroying thousands of homes and blanketing the Willamette Valley in hazardous smoke for days. Fire officials are not predicting a repeat of that specific scenario, but the underlying fuel conditions in May 2026 are, by some measures, worse than they were at the same point in 2020.
What fire planners are seeing
The Oregon Department of Forestry’s seasonal outlook, built from National Weather Service and NOAA Climate Prediction Center products, projects warmer-than-average temperatures and continued precipitation deficits from May through July. That three-month window is when most large fires ignite in Oregon, and the forecast offers no sign of relief.
The Oregon State Fire Marshal used Wildfire Awareness Month to urge residents to act now: clear defensible space around homes, harden structures against ember exposure, and use extreme caution with debris burns. Human-caused ignitions remain the dominant driver of wildfire starts in Oregon, particularly near the wildland-urban interface, and officials say that even a small uptick in careless behavior under these conditions could overwhelm initial-attack resources.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has pressed the Trump administration on federal wildfire preparedness, citing the one-third-of-average snowpack figure and questioning whether crew deployment, aircraft availability, and asset pre-positioning for the Pacific Northwest will match the accelerated timeline. As of late May, the administration has not publicly detailed its response plan for Oregon’s fire season, leaving state agencies to prepare without clear assurances about the level of national support they can expect.
Gaps that worry local officials
No state or federal agency has published specific projections for 2026 wildfire acreage or ignition counts in Oregon. The Department of Forestry’s outlook provides climate indicators but stops short of translating them into fire-start predictions or burned-area estimates. That means the scale of the threat is defined largely by analogy to past low-snowpack years rather than by a quantified 2026 forecast.
County-level readiness in the newly declared drought-emergency areas is also an open question. The governor’s declaration unlocks certain state assistance mechanisms, but the mix of federal land, state forestland, and private timber parcels across eastern Oregon complicates jurisdictional responsibility. Volunteer fire departments, which handle a significant share of initial response in rural counties, face the prospect of an earlier and longer call-up with no guarantee of additional funding or staffing. Updated community wildfire protection plans for the affected counties have not yet been released.
Federal resource allocation adds another layer of uncertainty. The gap between Oregon’s state-level warnings and any documented federal commitment means agencies are planning for a worst-case trajectory without knowing whether national resources will arrive in time if fires break out in June rather than August.
What Oregonians can do before fire season peaks
Fire officials across the state are delivering a consistent message: the window for preparation is closing faster than usual. The State Fire Marshal’s office recommends clearing flammable vegetation and debris within 30 feet of structures, replacing combustible fencing and deck materials where possible, and checking that address signs are visible for emergency responders. County burn restrictions are being enacted earlier than normal in several jurisdictions, and residents should verify local rules before igniting any outdoor fire.
For those in the nine drought-emergency counties, the governor’s declaration may open access to state resources for water hauling, livestock support, and other drought-related assistance. Details vary by county, and residents can check with their local emergency management offices or the Oregon Office of Emergency Management for specifics.
The data points are not ambiguous. Oregon’s forests are drier, earlier, than they have been in the modern monitoring record. Snowpack is at historic lows, the climate outlook through midsummer is unfavorable, and the agencies responsible for fighting fire are warning that this season could test their capacity. How severe it ultimately becomes will depend on weather patterns that have not yet materialized, on federal decisions that have not yet been announced, and on thousands of individual choices about campfires, equipment use, and burn piles made across a landscape that is already primed to ignite.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
