Tag: weather

Old Man Winter came knocking on our door yesterday. Down here in the valley we only got a light sprinkling of rain, but up in the mountains they got a good old fashioned winter storm. This is evidenced by the glimpse of Jobs Peak this morning, finally covered with a coating of snow again, after being completely naked for several months.

So winter has begun again. This doesn't mean it's cold weather as far as the eye can see. Summer usually has one more blast waiting for us in October, and it's not uncommon to have a mini heat wave come in near the end of the month. But the first snow of the season is always a good indicator that the stifling heat of summer is behind us, and now it's time to get on with the business of winter. Let's hope it's a good one. We can use the water next year.

What's missing from this picture of Stephanie Way?

Oh, that's right. The mountains. The mountains are missing because there's so much smoke in the air. From the National Weather Service:

Smoke has reduced visibilities to between 3 and 5 miles across northeast California and western Nevada this morning. The worst conditions have been observed in the Sierra from Lake Tahoe north into Plumas and Lassen counties...and in western Nevada in the the Reno-Carson City areas.

Monster dust devil in the distance.

We've mostly tamed the desert here in Western Nevada, but sometimes the desert still knows how to fight back. The one weapon mother nature will always have against us is wind, and around here that means dust devils. Big, violent ones. The Record Courier has the story of a house in the Ranchos that was hit by a monster dust devil. It smashed up his chicken coop and threw his back patio into his front yard.

These monster winds have struck our house too. Last October a particularly bad windstorm toppled the wooden playground in our backyard. It weighs hundreds of pounds, but a big gust just knocked it right down.

So we may not live in the land of tornadoes, but we still get our share of angry winds.

Mother Nature's in a funny mood. Here's the little joke she pulled on us tonight, the night before we're scheduled to drive over the Sierra:

A nice meaty March snowstorm. Only about a quarter inch out there, but still. A quarter inch here means five or six at Donner Summit. The lucky thing about March snowstorms is that they melt faster than they fall, so we should be fine tomorrow. Still.

I know that after the last few weeks this is hardly even worth mentioning anymore, but it's snowing in Carson City right now. They're saying it's going to peter out at around 2-5 inches, so we'll have to see what the morning brings.

Update, 11:45am: It did stop at around two inches. Which is all turning to slush as we speak.

After 2007 being one of the driest years in recent memory, 2008 seems to be trying to make up for it. After our "big" snowstorm at the beginning of January (10 inches is a lot for us), we've had a lot of cloudy days and small storms blow through, dropping half an inch or a quarter inch at a time. Not a lot, no, but we were expecting to have a January nearly as dry as all of last year was. And then last night the skies opened up again, dropping another fairly big storm on us. I measured 5-6 inches of snow down here in the valley, falling in just a few hours.

Now that the sun's out it's all melting, of course. That's how our cycle works; we never get to hold onto our snow for long. But it makes for a fun Sunday morning, at least.

They've been threatening fog in the weather reports for a few days now, but it wasn't until last night that it really rolled in. We don't get fog here very often, so it's a real treat when it happens.

Another treat that we don't get very often is pogonip. This rare and wonderful substance doesn't make an appearance every year; the conditions have to be just right for it to form. Fog; stagnant air; freezing temperatures. These three combine to create a condition where the fog actually crystallizes and attaches itself to tree branches. Also known as freezing fog, pogonip comes from the Shoshone word for "white death".

It looks like today the Carson Valley got pogonip, but Carson City missed out. Must not have been cold enough, or the fog wasn't thick enough. And even the little bit that we got in the Carson Valley pales in comparison to what we had back in January 2005. If you were around back then, you remember that the fog rolled in and didn't leave for eight full days. Every day we woke up to a frosty coating of pogonip covering every surface. And every afternoon it would melt, and the fog would peel back a little, only to reform again as soon as the sun went down.

That was before I started Around Carson, but I did put up some pictures at my other blog. You can find them here and here and here.

Unlike Friday night, where it kept snowing all night, on Saturday the precipitation was finished by 8pm. I measured a total of 10-11 inches in Carson City.

It's 6:30, and still snowing. I just took a reading at 10.5 inches here in west Carson.

It's so surreal outside. The snow is scattering the light from the streetlights, making it brighter than a full moon outside. But it's also quiet, because every sound is muffled. And if it's not surreal enough in real life, my camera just enhanced the mood in these photos.

What looks like a miniature sun in that last photo is actually the Carson Nugget's parking lot.

It's 4:00, and still snowing in Carson. I figure we've added another inch today on top of the six we already had.