Where the town's water stands — Olympic snowpack against the published median, the Big Quilcene below the city's intake, and where to check the official conservation status.
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Port Townsend and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.
Port Townsend sits in the Olympic rain shadow — about 19 inches of rain a year — and drinks from the Big and Little Quilcene Rivers, about 30 miles away by a gravity pipeline built in 1928. That makes mountain snowpack and the rivers' summer flow town business. Everything on this page is a published federal measurement, updated daily.
Snow water equivalent — the inches of water held in the snow — at the monitoring stations nearest the watershed, compared with the published 1991–2020 median for today’s date.
Mount Crag — The closest snow station to the Big and Little Quilcene headwaters — one valley south, in the eastern Olympics above Hood Canal. In a median year the snowpack here peaks at 32.4 in around April 9.
Dungeness — In the upper Dungeness valley, just over the divide north of the Quilcene headwaters. In a median year the snowpack here peaks at 9.9 in around March 15.
Buckinghorse — High in the interior Olympics — the deepest snowpack the range carries, a read on the mountains' whole water bank. In a median year the snowpack here peaks at 62.7 in around April 17.
Big Quilcene River below the city diversion — Measured just downstream of the city's intake, so this is the water left in the river after Port Townsend draws its supply — low summer numbers here are why conservation gets asked of both the town and the mill. Official USGS gauge page.
Recent readings are provisional USGS data, subject to revision.
We don’t track a current conservation stage here — the official word comes from the pages below, and that’s where to check before changing how you water or wash.
City water doesn't come from town. It is diverted from the Big and Little Quilcene Rivers on the east side of the Olympics and flows by gravity about 30 miles to the city through the Olympic Gravity Water System, in service since 1928 — one of the oldest water systems in the state. Lords Lake and City Lake are the storage along the way, and a 2024 main rupture was a reminder of the system's age.
The Port Townsend Paper mill and the city share the system under a water supply agreement: in shortage years the mill must cut its water use first. That agreement, more than any reservoir, is the city's cushion in a dry summer.
Town itself gets only about 19 inches of rain a year, so the Quilcene rivers' late-summer flow depends on mountain snow melting slowly. The winter of 2025–26 ran low: on February 1, 2026 the Olympic basin's snow-water equivalent stood at 34% of the median, and spring runoff was projected at 65–73% of normal (Port Townsend Leader). The cards above show what the stations read now — in summer, after melt-out, the river gauge is the number to watch.
Every number on this page is a published measurement — nothing here is a forecast, and a good or bad snow year is not a prediction of what the summer will bring. Snowpack checked July 9 at 3:24 PM. River flow checked July 9 at 3:24 PM. Snow data from the USDA NRCS Snow Survey and streamflow from the U.S. Geological Survey (both public domain).