It's Snowing!

I chatted with my landlord this afternoon...it's a funny circumstance in that we live on the same property, and our respective Front Doors are but 25 feet apart, and this is only the third conversation we've had face to face since I returned on Thanksgiving Eve!

We were commiserating over the sad state of our driveway...we're going to start referring to it as Antarctica! LLord asked if I remembered such a protracted siege of very cold weather...I thought the last time we had this long a Cold Snap was back in the late 80's...I was living in a subdivision east of downtown Truckee, and driving a '74 Power Wagon back then. I parked inside my garage, but it was so cold that I had to keep a droplight running all day under the hood so that the engine oil would stay fluid enough so the 318 V-8 would turn over and start every night at 10:30PM!

California's All Time Record Low Temperature was recorded only a mile from my garage as the crow flies, at Boca Dam...-45°F! Off hand, I don't remember how long ago that frigid benchmark was set, but I want to say it was back in the 1920's if not in the late 19th Century!

Well, thankfully this Cold Snap can't hold a candle to that one back then...oh, we've had a few mornings below zero out a the Airport (where the Official Truckee Weather Station resides), but the rest of the Town usually runs 10°-15° warmer than the Official Temperature.

So far, todays snow is looking pretty much like an on and off again deal. I watched two Noon News Shows from Sacramento...neither broadcast featured weatherfolks gushing over the next system...just a lot of hedging and weasel-words...and my old favorite "virga".

There's plenty of echoes on the radar images, but the underlying airmass is very dry and absorbs the precip before it reaches the surface. Reno's AFD talks about the dry air and the atmospheric mixing that isn't quite happening yet...the forecasters go on to reduce the amount of precip in their forecast update.

The remote sensors show temperatures down overall from the last week...no afternoon highs above freezing since Saturday...It feels warm up on Antarctica, but it's just the cloud deck keeping the lid on, and the lack of any breeze to speak of...So...

I get to look forward to another great week ahead!