Before and after satellite images show how little snow is left in the western US | CNN

A record warm March has melted an already abysmal snowpack across the western United States, with impacts clearly visible in satellite imagery. It’s setting the stage for an especially concerning summer season for a region critically dependent on mountain snow. Snowpack in the western US typically reaches its highest level by late March or early April, but instead it’s at record lows, meaning a host of potential impacts, including greater wildfire risk and less water availability to river basins come summer. That includes the Colorado River Basin, which has been mired in water scarcity issues for years. The great melt-off started two weeks ago alongside an unprecedented heat wave that peaked with the country’s warmest March temperature on record. It’s still pumping out record-breaking temperatures 10 days later. One of the West’s driest and warmest winters on record meant snowpack was already at record lows even before the climate change-fueled heat dome arrived. Then it did, and as temperatures soared to as high as 30 degrees above normal, snowpack plummeted in the Colorado Rockies. Typically, snowpack in the Colorado Rockies peaks in early April, but the persistent heat