Skiers and snowboarders pray for snow so they can shred the slopes. Climatologists and hydrologists have an entirely different and more critical reason to cross their fingers for the “white gold.”

The West’s historic drought has many impacts, including water shortages, more severe wildfire seasons and unprecedented heat waves, to name a few. Intense droughts are a result of many factors, one of which scientists have recently begun to analyze with more scrutiny: snow drought.