RENO, Nev. (AP) - Bitter cold moved into the Sierra Nevada on Wednesday on the heels of a storm that dropped 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow on the mountains around Lake Tahoe the day before.
Wednesday night’s lows were forecast to dip to between 3 degrees and negative 7 at Lake Tahoe, with teens down to 10 degrees in Reno, the National Weather Service said.
The storm that dumped 6 to 10 feet (1.8 meters to 3 meters) of snow on mountaintops along the Nevada-California line the three previous days pelted northeast Nevada’s high desert with record rainfall for the date on Tuesday.
The 0.25 inch (6 millimeters) of rain recorded at Ely near the Utah line broke the old record of 0.19 (5 millimeters) set on Feb. 5, 1976, the weather service said. Eureka also got 0.25 inch (6 millimeters), breaking the previous record of 0.08 (2 millimeters) set in 1997.
Further north on the colder side of the front, up to 17 inches (42 centimeters) of snow fell on Tuesday and early Wednesday in the mountains around Lamoille near Elko. Another 6 inches (15 centimeters) of snow also fell Tuesday night into Wednesday in the Sierra, where a total of 11 feet (3.3 meters) of new snow had been recorded since Saturday at Mammoth Mountain about 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of Lake Tahoe.
In southern Nevada, Interstate 15 was closed for several hours Wednesday morning because of icy conditions at Primm 44 miles (71 kilometers) south of Las Vegas and at least one wreck in California.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.