David Cristiani alerted me to media reports of snow on Mt. Charleston yesterday afternoon. Mt. Charleston is about 30 to 35 miles to the west-northwest of downtown Las Vegas. The mountain is the highest in Nevada, with an elevation of 11,916 ft msl. Photo above was provided to Las Vegas media by the ski area up on the mountain. Yesterday's storm event was not a cold event - the evening sounding from LAS had considerable CAPE and a freezing level around 600 mb. I don't see snow on the trees above, but there's lots of ice on the ground. The 2 pm MST regional radar from NCAR/RAL (below) indicates significant thunderstorms in the Las Vegas area with convection also occurring over Mt. Charleston. This was a serious storm event at lower elevations, with heavy rain and flooding. I suspect that the "snow" event was actually a mountain thunderstorm dumping a lot of graupel. The media report included a mention of lightning, which better fits yesterday's weather system than does snow.
No comments:
Post a Comment