Wet band of snow smacks Carson Valley

Cold air and warm Lake Tahoe water combined Sunday to launch a band of wet heavy snow across Carson Valley.

At the center of the band, Sheridan Acres weather watcher George Uebele reported 8 inches of snow fell overnight, containing .75 inches of moisture.

Centerville weather watcher Julian Larrouy said he remembers it snowing last year about this time, but that it has been decades since this much snow has fallen.

"I remember a Candy Dance that 6-8 inches fell, but that was a long time ago," he said. "The Pyranees Hotel (which closed in the 1970s) was still open. I remember because that's where we had dinner."

Larrouy said it's not unusual for the Valley to receive a light snow early in the year.

"Last year it snowed on the first day of duck season," Larrouy said. "But that wasn't near the accumulation this storm was."

Larrouy's sister, Sybil Dunagan, who grew up in Centerville, said Sunday's snow was hard on the trees, which still have green leaves on them.

"We slept in a little and then the doorbell rang because the power went out for a little bit," she said. "When I opened the door to see who was there, I saw all the snow."

The snow brought down large branches throughout the central Valley.

"Julian came by and saw a big branch weighed down by snow," she said. "He walked in the house and two minutes later the branch came down. If he'd still been under it, it would have killed him."

While there were no reports of anyone struck by falling limbs, power lines weren't quite so agile and were taken down in several places.

NV Energy spokeswoman Faye Anderson said the company's troublemen started scouting at 12:30 a.m. Sunday and began calling out power crews at 4 a.m.

"Three inches of wet snow when the trees still have leaves is bound to cause some power outages," Anderson said.

Power was out for up to eight hours in places, including Foothill Road south of Centerville, where a tree went through a primary line. Power was out to 150 customers there.

Gardnerville residents reported power out for up to eight hours.

"We had little spot outages that went down to individual homes," she said. "It seems to have hit Carson and Mason valleys the hardest."

The National Weather Service radar showed a tongue of moisture starting in South Lake Tahoe and stretching northeast across Carson and Mason valleys.

"There was quite a bit of snow along that band," said National Weather Service Meteorologist Brian O'Hara. "It came right off Lake Tahoe, and showed up pretty well on radar imagery."

O'Hara said Lake water warmed by recent high temperatures combined with cold air to create an unstable air mass over the area.

"It dumps snow on the downwind side," he said. "Where the snow lands depends on the wind direction. With the trajectory we saw Sunday it dropped a band of snow right along one area and hardly anything on either side of that."

O'Hara said lake effect snows are more pronounced in the fall when there is a large difference between water and air temperatures.

"We'll get lake effect events once every other year in the area," he said. "But this was a really cold storm front that really intensified the lake effect."

Minden weather watcher Stan Kapler recorded 4 inches of wet snow, which boiled down to .56 inches of moisture.

Further north in Genoa, 3 inches of snow fell, but parts of the north Valley and Indian Hills barely got a dusting.