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

Hey all! Looks like we are transitioning into a more active thunderstorm pattern once again. High pressure over the desert southwest will bring above normal temperatures for the next few days. Increasing moisture and instability will bring chances for thunderstorms Friday through Monday, mainly for the Sierra and for far western Nevada. Gusty outflow winds and lightning fire starts are the main concerns for Friday and Saturday with locally heavy rain possible by the weekend. Just to be clear though, this monsoon push will not be like the one we experienced earlier in July. Although there could be some localized flooding we are not expecting multiple areas of flash flooding. Why?  The moisture associated with this southeasterly flow will not have remnants of a tropical storm with it (Dolores in early July) and moisture doesn't appear to stick around as long as last time. It looks like southwesterly flow should return by sometime next week which will really dry out th

Welcome back! Glad that we haven't lost your interest ;-) It has been an incredibly busy couple of weeks with all of the thunderstorms across northeast California and western Nevada. Since it is thunderstorm season we thought this would be a great topic to discuss! Today we are going to focus on one of our most important tools of the trade, the doppler radar, aka WSR-88D (Weather Surveillance Radar 1988 Doppler).  Radar was invented during WWII and many surplus radars were given to the Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service) after the war. WSR-57 and WSR-74 were the first radars built specifically for weather detection. WSR-88D was the first radar that could detect particle motion and they were deployed across the country in the mid to late 1990s. The current WSR-88D network includes 160 radars across the country as well as Alaska, Hawaii Puerto Rico and Guam (not pictured). Radar is an acronym that stands for RA dio D etection A nd R anging, but how does it work?