El Niño tilts toward wet year

The implications of a potentially big El Niño has been a topic of conversation among Carson Valley weather watchers.

The warm weather pattern in the Pacific is already heating up, but there’s a question about how much it will affect Western Nevada.

So far, the answer is not much, but like anything in our corner of the Silver State, wait a bit, it’ll change.

While the first two months of the water year are going into the history books a bit drier than average, there’s no guarantee conditions are going to stay that way.

On Monday, National Weather Service Reno Meteorologist Chris Smallcomb said there’s a chance that an atmospheric river will hit the coast neat the California Oregon border that could bring some snow to the Lake Tahoe area.

October’s .2 inches and November’s .39 so far are not particularly wet, but they aren’t bone dry either. There are several times over the last 117 years where the water year started out drier than this year.

Smallcomb noted that the current precipitation levels are a tad below average, but not something out of the ordinary.

Most of the weather that arrived with last year’s big storms turned up in the last weeks of December. That’s not unusual for the central Sierra where it can go for weeks without a drop and then suddenly see a ton of moisture all at once.

Since he’s based in Reno, Smallcomb relied on a gambling analogy for the forecast over the winter.

“You’ve got your dice and are rolling them and they’re a little bit loaded toward wetter outcome, but that’s not a guarantee,” he said.

Between the record water years of 2016-17 and 2022-23, Western Nevada has seen middlin’ to dry conditions, but that doesn’t actually affect the odds for any given outcome this year.

The one thing we say with confidence is that each of these winters is a little bit different, and that’s part of the charm of living here.