Welcome to The Newsfeed.

I'm Venice Buhain, in for Paris Jackson.

An unseasonably warm winter has meant much less snowfall than normal, impacting our regional snowpack.

Multimedia Journalist Jaelynn Grisso has more on what that means for the future of snow sports.

- Winter recreation has long been a staple of the Pacific Northwest, but significantly less snowfall this year has led to questions about its future.

- Whenever you have a low snowfall year, it just means conditions aren't quite as good.

Skiers and riders adapt and figure it out.

You know, "I'm going to go have fun and ski and snowboard regardless.” But there's a certain amount of visitation that's just lost entirely because you don't have the snow depth or the conditions.

- The reduced snowpack also means less water in the spring and summer, which creates drought conditions.

- In Washington state, we have a distinct wet season and a dry season.

So we like to save water during the wet season, to use it when we don't see a lot of a lot of precipitation in the spring and summer in Washington.

And so our snowpack does that for us.

It actually stores a fair amount of our water, that even our reservoirs can't hold.

- Last week, the Washington Department of Ecology declared a statewide emergency drought.

That makes this the fourth year in a row all or part of the state has been under a drought declaration.

Bumbaco says the trend toward warmer weather and precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, is exactly what she expects to see with climate change.

But what does that mean for the future of snow sports?

- Recreation isn't going away completely in Washington.

We know that our snowpack will be reduced.

But even by the 2050s we will still see years where there's still enough snowpack to recreate in our mountains.

We'll continue our coverage of the environment next time with a story about lead contamination and its impacts.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed.