NWS Reno: Forecasting for the Sierra and Western Nevada Since 1905

As meteorologists we often get asked about anything that happens up in the skies, whether or not it's weather-related. I still remember the "great Google Loon  commotion" in May 2014 where our office was inundated with questions about what was floating over Reno for several hours one afternoon. So that brings me to our upcoming total lunar eclipse taking place early Saturday morning. We're not the experts on eclipses, talk to the Fleischmann Planetarium folks about that, but we certainly can talk about the weather expectations for the show. Picture of the December 2011 lunar eclipse over the slopes of Peavine, taken from NWS Reno If you're an early riser (like me) or up really late Friday night (not me), here's the particulars on the upcoming eclipse from NASA. Reading other articles , this upcoming eclipse is also the shortest total lunar eclipse of this century, with totality lasting only 5 minutes. Sounds perfect for my attention span! Partial ecl...

Some of you may have read the forecast discussion the past couple of days and noticed the reference to "downslope winds" or "downslope enhancement". What does it MEAN? Well we are going to explain that to you today in the simplest terms that we can...so here we go! First of all, wind is typically driven by pressure differences, which are influenced by thermal differences. The greater the difference, the stronger the wind. (Video here ) This type of wind is fairly typical, and we would call it a "gradient driven wind". Downslope conditions are characterized by winds encountering a barrier and attempting to get past that barrier. Let's take a look at this by relating it to something we are more familiar with, like water running in a creek! Let's pretend in a perfect world there is a straight, slow moving river with a smooth riverbed. In this ideal scenario (without friction, physics, etc.), the water flows down the river quietly and calmly...

This entry is part of our series called "Tools of the Trade".  The idea behind the series is to share with you some of the cutting edge tools that go into our decision making process. Today we're going to look at relatively new tool, West Coast Atmospheric River Landfall Tool , that is becoming a go-to way to help us examine the potential for atmospheric rivers reaching the west coast. We may abbreviate atmospheric rivers as AR, because sometimes we don't want to type out all the letters of a word. The tool has been developed out of several years of research from the CalWater project at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory with assistance from Plymoth State University and the University of California-San Diego Scripps Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes . A significant portion of our winter precipitation comes from just a handful of these atmospheric rivers making landfall in northern and central California. During drought winters we may only s...

Welcome readers! NWS Reno is venturing out into the world of blogging. Our goal is to provide a resource for the science behind the forecast, random explanations of weather phenomena/factoids, and anything else that we deem interesting with respect to the atmosphere that affects the Sierra and western Nevada. We hope to post a blog entry once a week, perhaps a bit more frequently as interesting topics arise. For those of you who aren't as familiar with us, the National Weather Service in Reno is responsible for a portion of  eastern California that spans from the Surprise Valley and Lassen County to the Lake Tahoe area and southward to Mammoth Lakes. Across western Nevada, our responsibilities cover Carson City, Churchill, Douglas, Lyon, Mineral, Pershing, Storey and Washoe Counties.  The map below shows our forecast area outlined in black. We issue new forecasts twice a day, typically around 3 am and 3 pm. Yep we're up all night, 3...