SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s snow season isn’t alone in its “slow start.”

Snowpack levels are below average to well below average in basins across the West, and satellite imagery shows that the region’s snow cover is lowest through the first week of December since the program launched in 2001, according to a new report by the National Integrated Drought Information System, a multiagency federal program that tracks drought risks.

“Much of the West is in a snow drought as warm (temperatures) have brought rain to many areas that would normally get snow. Snow cover across the West was the lowest for Dec. 7 in at least 25 years,” the agency wrote in a statement on Thursday.

Snow covered 90,646 square miles of the West at the start of this week, per a reading of the Moderate Resolution Imaging S

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