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Although these days some area fields are muddy with standing water in furrows, Skagit County remains in drought conditions. Future water supply is a critical question. Nick Bond, the state climatologist, visited Skagit County last Wednesday to speak on “Water Supplies in NW Washington State in Future Decades.” Compared with many places, Skagit’s outlook is not dire, yet emerging trends demand attention and adaptive measures.

Bond’s key points included likely wetter winters and drier summers, issues stemming from timing for supplying water to agriculture, and slow and then faster warming trends. Much uncertainty remains and variability is high, but water supply–and all that depends on it–will look different in Skagit County in coming decades. He presented diverse data.

During last summer’s drought, Jenna Friebel, the executive director of the Skagit County Drainage and Irrigation Districts Consortium, invited Bond to Skagit County for this discussion. Bond’s lecture and discussion was part of Washington State University’s Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center’s Lunch & Learn Seminar series with about 30 people attending. State senator Ron Muzzall (R, Oak Harbor), a lifelong farmer, introduced Bond, calling him a true “weather wonk,” having an obsession with practical importance for all who depend on sun, rain and wind.

Bond presented dozens of slides with climate data sometimes contextualized broadly but mainly zeroing on Skagit County. The data captured some trends, but some information is still too preliminary to know whether long-term change has begun. Not all weather disasters, Bond pointed out, are signs of climate change.

Those who pay attention to climate change scenarios in the Northwest would not be surprised to learn that snowpack in the Cascades is declining, summer nights are warming, summers are drier and winters are wetter. Rivers generally are reaching peak flow earlier in the season, and their temperatures are rising. The trends for these are expected to continue, gradually for a few decades and then more rapidly. Given both the trends and the uncertainty, Bond urged building resilience into systems and practices.

Not everything is disastrous. Crops typically grown for Skagit agriculture require less water than those in eastern Washington. Bond noted that future scenarios envision longer growing seasons and some plants benefit from higher CO2 concentration and will lose less water through evapotranspiration. Climate stakeholder coalitions are also improving, suggesting possibilities for adaptive solutions to emerge. Still, this is all complicated for a place with many challenges.

The National Integrated Drought Information System recorded 2023 as Skagit County’s fifth driest year in the 129-year data record, making Bond’s data precipitation especially relevant. The news is not encouraging. Throughout the Pacific Northwest, summer precipitation trends have declined through the last half-century; not a single data site showed increased summer rain.

Many rely on the water in the Skagit River, including salmon, farmers and hydropower customers. Given forecasts for 50 years from now, Bond said, there will be less water coming downstream than is desired. “Nobody is going to get everything they want,” Bond said. “Mother Nature has all the cards, and she doesn’t play fair.” Speaking about salmon specifically but perhaps applicable more broadly, Bond said, “It’s going to be an enormous challenge.”

Most of the data used in Bond’s presentation is publicly available from his office and the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington.