First band of rain moving through the Truckee Meadows around 2:30 pm Tuesday. Everything is moving west to east.
While snow wasn’t on the ballot this year, it is in the forecast Tuesday as a fast moving system sweeps through the region. Snow is already being reported along I-80 at Donner, but melting as it hits the pavement. After a quiet start to Election Day, it is now cold, windy, and a little wet in the Reno area as the front moves through. The upper level low will continue to move east through the evening.
This map is at 700mb, which is little bit above the surface. The blue lines are cooler air.
What a difference a couple hours can make. The storm will be past Reno by 8 pm, if not before that. You can already see the cooler air moving in behind the system at 700mb. Short term models are showing the initial band moving through in the early afternoon, followed by a second round during commute time. This makes sense, with the first band associated with the cooler air moving in and the second round as the low moves east.
Pavement is wet for now along Mt. Rose Highway with snow on the grass to the side of the road.
Colder air moves in early tonight, dropping the snow level to around 6,000’, but most of the moisture will be east of Tahoe at that point. A couple inches of snow can’t be ruled out in the High Sierra today, mainly above 7,000’. There is a very slight chance of seeing some snow in Virginia City Tuesday evening, but it’s less than a 20% chance. Rain is likely for much of the Reno area. Windy too. Rain totals will be less than a quarter of an inch.
Tuesday’s storm is nothing like what moved through over the weekend. Not very many snow reports came in, but Mammoth Mountain is reporting between 9-15” of snow last weekend over Halloween. They got enough snow to open early on November 5th, when originally, they were going to open on the 13th. The Central Sierra Snow Lab is seeing some light snow on Tuesday and are reporting getting around four inches of snow over the weekend.
Just over a half inch of rain has fallen at the Reno Airport since the beginning of October, which is pretty close to normal for the start of the water year. Nearly a third of an inch of rain alone fell on Halloween alone. Between .03 and .10 inches of rain will fall by Tuesday evening in the Truckee Meadows. Overall, rain totals will be light, with pockets of moderate rain.