A cow stands in a foggy field south of Genoa Lane on Friday morning.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.
A little bit of weather overnight may help clear out the fog that has socked in Carson Valley for the last three mornings, but conditions may bring it back on Saturday.
As of 10 a.m., visibility at Minden Tahoe Airport remained at less than a quarter mile as freezing fog was reported.
That fog precipitated onto branches and fence wires to create the ice crystals known as pogonip across the Valley.
If the fog follows Thursday morning’s pattern it should burn off by noon.
“High humidity combined with temperature inversions and
Light to no winds are keeping the fog in place,” National Weather Service Reno Meteorologist Chris Smallcomb said. “It is rather shallow in
many areas, less than 500 feet, per aircraft soundings at Reno and
Alert Camera views. That being said, this is a low confidence
situation on when this fog may lift or burn off. Best guess right now
is by noon local time as we get just a little bit of heating and
some mixing.”
The fog might return tonight thanks to cool temperatures and light winds it all the familiar places.
Once the fog clears, there may be some upper clouds as a dry cold front arrives in Western Nevada. There’s a slight chance of precipitation after midnight and an even slighter chance that will be snow.
Fog will be back on Saturday morning, but not as widespread, according to the National Weather Service. High temperatures will be down into the low 40s on Saturday before warming up to near 50 before the next chance for weather on Wednesday.
Last week’s wet weather managed to ease December’s precipitation to just a smidge north of average with 1.03 inches in time for the first day of winter.
However with the next storm not expected to arrive until the middle of next week, it’s unlikely another .51 inches will arrive in time for the month to achieve the average of 1.54 inches.
While the 2022-23 water year topped 2016-17 it’s unlikely 2023 will see enough moisture to catch up to calendar year 2017’s record 20 inches or even the 19.67 inches that fell in 1909.
As of Thursday, a total of 18.81 inches have fallen in Minden, where records have been kept since 1906.
