Recent work by the authors has demonstrated a lack of mutual consistency between continental-scale snow extent and snow depth variability, and a robust teleconnection pattern between North American snow depth and the PDO/PNA modes, independent of more extensively studied but less robust snow extent-climate relationships. These results demonstrate the potential sensitivity of snow depth with respect to climate over broad scales, and motivate the current investigation of the underlying physical mechanisms that are responsible for such snow depth – climate linkages. Observational analyses indicate that snow depth variations are influenced by precipitation anomalies over broad regions of North America. The precipitation anomalies arise from moisture transport from the Pacific Ocean, which is associated with atmospheric circulation patterns over the northern Pacific Ocean and western North America. A newly released, long-term, high-resolution gridded snow depth dataset covering all of North America facilitates both the recent and current work. Distinguishing snow depth – climate relationships from snow extent – climate relationships, and identifying the responsible physical mechanisms involved, will help improve our current understanding of overall snow – climate interactions. Such understanding will broaden the scope of hydrologic land surface – atmosphere interaction research, and also help to effectively incorporate snow cover anomalies and feedbacks into hydroclimatic forecasting and climate change predictions.