Rare snowfall visits Las Vegas for first time in nearly two years
Residents of Las Vegas awoke to a dusting of snow Tuesday, the first flakes to fall there in almost two years. Many areas in the Desert Southwest saw an unusual dash of snow amid a potent winter disturbance that passed over the area.
At McCarran International Airport, light snow was reported from 2 to 7 a.m. Tuesday with temperatures around 34 degrees. A winter weather advisory was issued to account for the snowfall, which was expected to tally several inches in the mountains west of Red Rock Canyon. Even the valley saw an inch or two.
A wintry scene emerged in Las Vegas proper, where a dusting of snow coated palm trees like powdered sugar. Monday marked the wettest day there since last April, with 0.12 inches of precipitation measured.
Between late April and Monday, only 0.04 inches of rainfall was tallied, featuring a record 240-day streak without measurable precipitation.
Tuesday morning’s snowfall was the first since Feb. 20-21, 2019, when 0.8 inches fell.
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Las Vegas wasn’t the only place to enjoy a sporadic visit from Old Man Winter. Snow made an appearance in the Arizona desert, with a steady confetti of flakes on the iconic red rocks at Sedona. The area was placed under a winter storm warning, with heavy snow forecast above 4,000 feet.
In the higher elevations across the Desert Southwest, a more significant accumulation was expected. Flagstaff recorded 26.9 inches of snow between Saturday and Monday, with temperatures in the teens and another 2 to 4 inches anticipated Tuesday.
Snow fell in Tucson as well, in southern Arizona, just 75 miles from the Mexican border. Heavy snows used to visit Tucson every couple years, but the city has been snow-starved since the early ’90s. Twenty-five inches was reported in Summerhaven in the mountains northeast of Tucson, falling on the scar of the Bighorn Fire, which torched 119,987 acres last June.
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“It’s been a couple years since we’ve seen snow in Tucson,” said Jeremy Michael, a meteorologist at the local National Weather Service office. “Last time we saw it was similar to today. We had a dusting to an inch downtown … outlying areas 1 to 3 inches.”
Downtown Tucson sits at about 2,400 feet elevation, with the neighboring hills around or above 3,000 feet.
“We did just get a measurement of around an inch along the Tucson International Airport,” Michael said.
The instigator behind the snow is a bowling ball of low pressure accompanied by cold air aloft plowing east through the Four Corners region. Ahead of it, an insurgence of dry air kicked up severe storms over parts of the South, producing a deadly tornado that raged through Fultondale, Ala.
A second disturbance will follow in its footsteps and drag an atmospheric river ashore in California later this week. Extreme snowfall amounts, totaling as much as 6 to 10 feet, are possible in the Sierra Nevada.
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