Minden precipitation breaks 114-year-old record

Six inches of snow containing .42 inches of moisture put Minden over the top for the wettest January on record with 8.05 inches as of Tuesday morning.

That toppled a 7.9-inch record set in 1909, which was recorded just three years after records started being kept in the newly formed town.

A trained weather spotter near the base of Fay Canyon reported 10 inches of snow in the southwest corner of Carson Valley on Monday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

Light snow fell much of the day on Monday, reflecting a colder storm. While it wasn’t very breezy, it didn’t take much wind to create drifts.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 3 feet of water is locked up in the snowpack at the top of Carson Pass with 36.7 inches, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service snow telemetry. That’s a half-foot beyond the maximum of 30.6 inches at the top of the Carson River’s West Fork.

Ebbett’s Pass at the top of the East Fork has 45.5 inches as of Tuesday, well over the 36.9 inch maximum for the date, or three times the median.

Both readings are well above the median for the date, but well short of the maximum for the season.

Further south, Monitor Pass in the Walker River Basin, is on track to exceed that with 438 percent of the median snow-water equivalent locked up in the snowpack.

On Tuesday, it was at 30.2 inches, or twice the maximum of 15.1 inches for the date. The peak maximum is 36.3 inches by April 19.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey gauge at Tahoe City, Lake Tahoe is up 17.4 inches since Dec. 18. At 10,127 acre feet per inch that means 176,209.8 acre feet have been added to the Lake in a month. That’s enough water to cover 275.3 square miles to the depth of a foot.