A screen capture of the Smith Valley fire off Artesia on Thursday evening.
Genoa, Nev. — Road controls went up on Kingsbury Grade about 5:30 a.m. and Spooner at 6 a.m. today as snow could be seen flying on the traffic camera at Daggett Summit.
East Fork firefighters sent two brush trucks and a water tender to aid Smith Valley Fire District in extinguishing a 3-acre fire on Artesia due east of Mount Siegel. The fire camera at the Ridge Tahoe caught a few puffs of black smoke coming over the ridge from the fire, reported at 5:16 p.m.
Douglas County Search and Rescue was toned out on Thursday night to aid an out-of-bounds skier. Complicating the rescue was the shutdown of Heavenly’s lifts in the wind.
Snow telemetry at Heavenly recorded 4 inches of snow since 8 p.m. Thursday, with a half inch of moisture. My gauge a mile north of Genoa has a quarter-inch in it this morning.
There wasn’t much to the rinse cycle from this latest storm, but the dry cycle is going full blast this morning with winds picking up to push the storm out. The peak wind gust recorded at Minden-Tahoe Airport on Thursday was 37 mph at around 4:30 p.m. Genoa experienced a 40 mph gust at 1:50 a.m.
Douglas County Emergency Management reported seven new cases of coronavirus and four recoveries on Thursday evening. That’s 26 new cases reported this week. Douglas is reporting 385 active cases.
Saturday is the first day of spring and as of this morning the Carson River Basin is at 76 percent of average snow-water in the snowpack. Ebbetts Pass at the top of the East Fork is at 77 percent of average, while Carson Pass at the top of the West Fork is at 67 percent, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service snow telemetry. Irrigation season opens on April 1.
We might see some more rain today before 5 p.m. with the snow level hanging around 6,400 feet and a high temperature of 56 degrees. Expect southwest winds 5-15 mph gusting to 30 mph.
Kurt Hildebrand is editor of The Record-Courier. Reach him at khildebrand@recordcourier.com
