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

Credit: Perceptionvsfact.com Since the NWS has ventured out into the social media realm, we tend to get WAY more questions and comments than back in the day. Many of these questions or comments are repeated so often that we figured we should try to demystify some of them. So here are the top 5 things people say to meteorologists and here are some facts to clear up the confusion. Enjoy! 1.  "Wish I could get paid to be wrong all the time," We know it may be hard to believe, but weather forecasting has come a LONG way over the past 20 years. Even over the past 5 years, substantial advances have been made to forecast dangerous weather. Now, can we predict exactly what is going to occur a week from now? Probably not, but we can give you a pretty good idea of what you can expect, especially over the next 48 hours. Predicting the exact location and timing of thunderstorms can be super tricky, but there are high resolution models being developed that will help us to do o...

Water vapor satellite imagery from June 13th. It has been a bit of an unusual summer thus far. Although June started out hot and unusually dry, the temperatures have moderated quite a bit. As of late we had quite a bit of  rain  as well as snow across Mono and Mineral counties this past weekend as a cold area of low pressure trekked across the West. Southern parts of Mono County received a good dousing of rain through the overnight hours of the 11th into the morning of the 12th with some portions of the southwest part of the county recording more than 1 inch of rain. Snow was reported down to 9000 feet in the heavier showers and thunderstorms with up to 3 inches reported near the summit of Mammoth Mountain above 10,500 feet. Webcam photos are from June Mountain (~9,200 ft), Mammoth Mountain Main Lodge (8900 feet), and Mammoth Sesame Snow Study (9014 feet). Now we are looking at a trough pushing into the Pacific Northwest that will bring windy conditions acro...

Wow. We have been MIA for a little while!  Hope you all haven't missed us too much ;-) We have only just started meteorological summer and the wildfires have already started popping up here and there. Just in the past week we have dealt with at least 3 in the local area, with a couple of them a little too close for comfort to the NWS Reno office (two fires on highway 395 near the Parr exits in Reno). Photo Courtesy of Reno Fire Department Facebook Page So we aren't fire fighters or fuels specialists, but here at the NWS we do have to stay in tune with the fuels status so we can be ready for the fire season. Namely, if the fuels aren't ready, then we aren't issuing Red Flag Warnings. Whoa whoa whoa... what is a red flag warning? Check out this short video and it will cover the basics. So as the video stated (you should really take the time to watch it), we at the NWS have to coordinate with our local fire partners to issue Red Flag Warnings for when the fuels...