Had an interesting drive through Nevada and California on Thursday....
I left Elko NV (where I had stayed Wednesday night) at 1000 PDT on Thursday morning to a chilly rain with temps in the low 40s. Steady rain continued to fall from a low overcast as I headed west on I-80. But I didn't stay in the rain for long - the precip changed to SNOW as I hit the 6200 foot elevation near Emigrant Pass (west of Carlin) at 1030. The flakes were small, grainlike, and very wet. They didn't stick to the road or to the ground. Five minutes later I was back below the 6200 foot elevation and back into the rain. Turns out this was just a taste of what was to come.
Shortly after crossing the California state line around 1500, I again started seeing small, grainlike snowflakes at the 5300 foot elevation. At 5800 feet, I began seeing very patchy accumulations of snow on grassy surfaces. Snow cover was slightly greater once I got above 6000 feet, but there were still a lot of bare patches. In the deepest areas, the snow depth was about one inch. But even at mid-afternoon, snow was still sticking to the rooftops in Truckee and Donner Lake. The snow cover became solid once I got over Donner Summit (elev 7229 feet). As low as 7000 feet, the snow was up to 2-3 inches deep but at no point stuck to the road. The snow no longer was sticking to the ground below 6000 feet. Snow continued to fall down to 5800 feet, and was a rain/snow mix as low as 5500 feet - or a little over a mile east of Blue Canyon. Plain rain fell the entire drive back to Sacramento.
Longtime California residents rave about how unusual this cold June storm is, yet those who have moved to California in the past 10 years are wondering what they are fussing about. And to some degree they have a point. Since 1988, we've had cold Gulf of Alaska storms drop snow down to 7000 feet or lower in the Sierra Nevada almost every June. We had one in 1988 on the 6th-7th. Another one in 1991 on the 27th-28th. Two in 1992 - one on the 15th and the other from the 28th-30th. Yet another in 1993 from the 3rd-7th. A couple more in 1995 - the first from the 5th-7th and a second very cold storm on the 15th-16th. And another in 1996 on the 26th. One more in 1997 from the 3rd-4th. Then there was one in 1998 on the 6th-7th. And now we've had one in 1999 on the 2nd-3rd. How many more years do we need to see storms like these in June for talk about their rarity to disappear?
A question I've been asked a few times the past few years is how much longer will we be getting these cold storms? Could they keep coming all summer? Consider this - from July 7-10, 1974, much of northern California picked up at least .50 inch of rain. For many locations, this was the only time they had ever seen significant rainfall in July this century. I bring this up because 1974 was also a major La Niņa year, much like 1999 has been. But another trend I've noticed in recent years is that we usually go into a very hot weather pattern soon after the very cool weather ends - sometimes almost immediately (1991, 1995, and 1996 were some good examples). Most people would prefer to see a weather pattern somewhere in between cool/wet and very hot, but that just might be the most unrealistic expectation of them all.
After three days in the 70s last week (70F on Wed, 71F on Thu, 77F on Fri), temps have recovered back into the 80s here in Turlock this weekend. Although that's still a bit cooler than average - skies are for the most part clear, visibility is great, winds aren't too strong...it's a great day to fire up the barbeque. Have a great summer everyone!