Wetter weather may turn water year around

Pogonip glistens in the sun on Monday morning along Genoa Lane as clouds cling to Jobs Peak.

Pogonip glistens in the sun on Monday morning along Genoa Lane as clouds cling to Jobs Peak.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.

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One good storm could still make a big difference in the Sierra Nevada snowpack for the water year.

“As January transitions to February, we’re more likely to finally get weather systems from the Pacific returning to the Western U.S.,” National Weather Service Reno Forecaster Mark Deutschendorf said on Monday morning. “Waves of Pacific moisture with an atmospheric river signal could keep precipitation going for parts of the Sierra and northeast California through next weekend, although there are wide variations on the trajectory of the moisture feed. There are plenty more details to sort through, but overall it looks like the first week of February will bring more precipitation opportunities compared to this month.”

Speakers at Monday’s January Drought & Climate Outlook Webinar said models indicate a change in the weather pattern starting this weekend into the next few weeks.

That would be a pretty big change for a weather pattern that essentially flatlined during January, according to Nevada Climatologist Baker Perry.

“Lake Tahoe could see a more active pattern and bigger results with 20-40 inches of snowfall after Feb. 11-17 and persisting from Feb. 18 to 24,” Perry said.

Jiabao Wang of the Scripps Institute’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes said the West Coast could see some increased chances of an atmospheric river.

“If there is a shift, most of the Western U.S. could have above normal precipitation conditions,” she said.

Researcher Dan McEvoy of the Desert Research Institute’s Western Regional Climate Center said January saw a blocking high pressure anomaly in the northeastern Pacific that resulted in an extremely dry January.

“The Eastern Sierra is rapidly falling below average with very little accumulation over the last few weeks,” McEvoy said.

The first winter storm of 2025 dropped some snow in Carson Valley on Sunday but did little to make a dent in improving the Sierra Nevada snowpack.

“The water content is not what we needed to get out of the snow drought that is developing,” McEvoy said. “There still can be a recovery in terms of drought and snowfall, but we need some larger storms to deliver in February and March.”

Fredericksburg resident Jeff Garvin reported 3 inches of snow at around 8 a.m. Sunday. Two inches of snow fell a mile north of Genoa.

Unfortunately, those numbers were echoed further up the Carson River Basin with 3 inches of new snow at Carson Pass and 2 inches at Ebbetts Pass, according to Natural Resource Conservation Center snow telemetry.

Carson Pass at the top of the West Fork of the Carson River dropped from 116 percent of snow water equivalent on Jan. 1 to 60 percent on Monday with a snow depth of 35 inches.

Ebbetts at the top of the river’s East Fork was at 99 percent snow-water equivalent on Jan. 1 and is down to 52 percent on Monday.

The snow depth at both locations has remained essentially the same through the month, but both typically have around twice the snow on the ground by the end of January.

The Carson River Basin has dropped from near average at the beginning of the month to 60 percent. The Walker Basin is down to 61 percent and the Truckee Basin, including Lake Tahoe was at 66 percent overall.

On Monday morning, Heavenly Mountain Resort reported 9 inches at the ski base from over the weekend, bringing its base depth to 4 feet.

Some of that base was created by the resort. Snow telemetry for Heavenly Valley indicated 52 percent of snow water equivalence with 28 inches on Monday morning.

Cold temperatures helped preserve the snow in the Valley on Sunday with the high hitting 29 degrees before dropping into single digits on Monday morning.