Jobs Peak stands above Carson Valley on Thursday morning.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.
Heavenly Mountain Resort’s avalanche control rattling windows in Carson Valley and the passes closing for the season are both indications that winter has truly arrived in Western Nevada, despite temperatures approaching 60 degrees.
With rain forecast for Christmas Eve and a snow level of around 4,700 feet early Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service is giving only a 5 percent chance for a white Christmas in the valleys.
But higher up, that precipitation should add to the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which banks away precipitation for spring and summer.
As of the last day of autumn, the Carson River Basin was running 103 percent of average precipitation for the water year, which started on Oct. 1. That’s running behind the Truckee River Basin, which was at 122 percent on Friday, but ahead of the Walker at 100 percent, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Two storms last week contributed to the snowpack with a new snow telemetry site at Lost Lakes near the top of the West Fork of the Carson River indicating more than a yard of snow fell Dec. 12-17.
The last few days have reduced the total snow depth to 44 inches, down from the peak of 50, but that snow contains 12.9 inches of water.
The Ebbetts Pass snow telemetry site is running right at average for the year with 9 inches of water locked in 28 inches of snow.
The service announced it upgraded Heavenly Valley’s sensor.
“In addition to its standard sensors, Heavenly now is collecting data for wind speed and wind direction, relative humidity, as well as incoming and outgoing long and short-wave radiation,” according to the service’s newsletter.
The site also includes an experimental sensor cable that hangs from the tower to measure the temperature every 8 inches in the snow.
“This is helpful for predicting how much energy is needed to produce snowmelt which impacts flood potential during rain on snow events,” according to the service.
Predicting how much water will be available for spring is one of the key goals of the service, which operates more than 80 snow telemetry sites from the Sierra and across the Great Basin.
Western Nevadans have regularly checked the snowpack since University of Nevada, Reno, Professor J.E. Church started in 1906. Snow telemetry was introduced in the 1970s with a dozen remote sensors around the state.
