Dan Wheat/Capital PressInterstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass on Dec. 16. Snowpack is building in the Washington Cascades and was 110 percent of normal statewide on Dec. 30.

YAKIMA, Wash. — Washington state is starting the new year with healthy mountain snowpack and above average water storage in critical Yakima Basin reservoirs.

The mountain snowpack is at 117 percent of normal, and Yakima Basin reservoir storage is 109 percent of average.

“Things look way better than the last two years. Way cooler, more normal temperatures and above normal precipitation,” said Scott Pattee, water supply specialist of the Washington Snow Survey Office of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Mount Vernon.

Snow is piling up particularly in the Northern Cascades, and the Climatic Prediction Center is predicting continued normal temperatures and above normal precipitation for the next three months, Pattee said.

“Our Fish Lake Snotel site up the Cle Elum River gained 14 inches of snow depth in the last three days. So we’ve been getting some pretty impressive snowfalls in the higher elevations,” he said on Dec. 30.

The Spokane Basin snowpack was the lowest in the state at 86 percent of normal.

The upper Columbia Basin (Okanogan and Methow rivers) was 104 percent.

The central Columbia Basin (Chelan, Entiat and Wenatchee) was 98 percent and the upper and lower Yakima basins were 100 percent.

The lower Snake Basin near Walla Walla was 96 percent, the lower Columbia Basin was 137 percent, central Puget Sound (from Cascade crest to lowlands) was 129 percent and the Olympics were 130 percent.

The upper Yakima rose from 87 to 100 percent in just one day, Pattee said.

Two years ago, all of those regions were well below 100 percent, marking the state’s worst drought in a decade. Two major irrigation districts and other junior water right holders in the Yakima Basin were cut to 47 percent of their normal water supply and crop losses reached into the millions of dollars.

The 2016 water year finished at the end of September at 120 percent of normal for precipitation even though snowpack melted a month and a half earlier than normal last spring due to warm weather, Pattee said.

2016 is on track to become the warmest year in state history, he said.

But the new water year, which started Oct. 1, began with heavy rains in October and November and is being continued with plentiful mountain snows, he said.

As of Dec. 30, the five mountain reservoirs serving the Yakima Basin were at 46 percent of capacity, which is 109 percent of normal, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Yakima.

Inflow slows in winter months from freezing weather but picks up during spring thaw.