Pay attention to this shit.
Pay attention to this shit. Galyna Andrushko/Shutterstock

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Ecology tweeted out a page of numbers about last year's snow drought. "Look deep into this chart: 2015 was a record low year!"

So let's look deep into the chart:

For now, just pay attention to the two columns on the far right. The farthest column shows which years had the lowest recorded snowpack in different mountain areas. Six out of 11 mountain areas show 2015 to be the record-breaking low year; all the other record-breaking years, with the exception of one, are in 2005.

The second farthest right column shows the years with maximum snowpack. None of them occur after the year 1999.

Now look at the current depth of snowpack in the far left column. It shows that overall, we're actually doing quite well. The majority of snowpack levels are above normal, which is good news for our reservoirs.

But it's also important to pay attention to trends. In Washington, there's been quite a bit of debate over whether some of the events we're seeing are the result of "natural variability"—short-term changes in climate that aren't caused by humans—or longterm climate change.

Climate science is notoriously complex. To date, the rule for science reporters has generally been, "Never attribute a single event to climate change." We know that in the longterm climate is changing, but it's harder to get a clear picture of what's happening in the short-term. Because of this, avoiding the desire to pin specific events to climate change has been a good rule. Well-meaning people who attribute every single weird event to climate change can fall into this trap, but it also applies to idiots bringing snowballs into Congress and claiming climate change doesn't exist.

Reporters could and should feel comfortable talking about climate trends instead. For the most part, the science just wasn't there yet to say how much a single drought or series of wildfires could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, if at all.

But now the science is catching up to the point where we may be able to identify how much man-made climate change has contributed to specific events. A major report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published earlier this month concluded that "it is now possible to estimate the influence of climate change on some types of extreme events, such as heat waves, drought, and heavy precipitation."

All that's to say this: We've now entered an era in which we have the tools to measure how man-made climate change is affecting certain types of extreme weather. And without performing those analyses, it's also harder to wholly rule out the idea that climate change is affecting our current surroundings.

Which means it's even more important to pay attention now. That chart above? It may be boring as hell, but it's telling us a lot about where we're headed. (Climate scientists are predicting decreased snowpack in the future, and they've said that last year served as a "dress rehearsal.") Soon, we'll be able to better understand where we already are.