University of Nevada, Reno

Nevada State Climate Office

Quarterly Report and Outlook

April - June 2016

Notable Weather and Climate in Nevada

The big news is that drought has waned over the last three months. Since April, no part of the state has been in D4/Ex-ceptional Drought, and there is little D3/Extreme Drought. Western Nevada is, however, still experiencing Moderate to Severe Drought.The reduction in drought was the result of normal to sub-stantially above normal precipitation in many parts of the state throughout the winter and into the spring. Parts of western Nevada received snow in April. Weather stations across the state recorded some of the highest 3-day precip-itation totals since 1980. This contributed to seasonal pre-cipitation totals that were more than four times normal in southern Nevada. Intense precipitation in Las Vegas led to flash flooding in April and again late June. While temperatures were below normal in May, April and June were warm. The COOP station in Laughlin recorded a new record high nightime temperature ‒ 96°F on June 21. That's hot! Other stations in the area experienced nighttime lows in the 80's that evening.Of course, summer means fire season. There have already been a few small fires in Nevada, as well as some larger fires in California that impacted air quality in Nevada.

State Climatologist, Douglas Boyle (douglasb@unr.edu)Dep. State Climatologist, Stephanie McAfee (smcafee@unr.edu)

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http://droughtmonitor.unl.eduhttp://www.wrcc.dri.edu

April - June Precipitation Percent of Normal

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu

April - June Temperature Difference from Normal

July 5 Drought Monitor

D4 Exceptional DroughtD3 Extreme DroughtD2 Severe DroughtD1 Moderate DroughtD0 Abnormally Dry

Drought impacts

Record-high temperatures

Flooding

Informe Trimestral y Pronóstico en línea www.unr.edu/climate/climate-summary

Spanish translation, Chelsea Canon

Thunderstorms and heavy rain

Snow

Expect a hot summer. The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a 50+% chance that the West will be warmer than normal, with equal chances of a wet, dry or average summer. In all but the southernmost parts of the state, though, summer is a rela-tively dry time of year, typically contributing less than 20% of annual precipitation. As a result, the National Interagency Fire Center is forecasting above normal fire potential for northwestern Nevada through August. So it's a good time to refresh your knowledge at Living with Fire (www.living withfire.info). Your's truly has been pulling up a lot of cheat grass. On the horizon for fall: there's a 75% chance of La Niña conditions developing. Stay tuned and feel free to contact us with any questions.

CoCoRaHSThe University of Nevada Cooperative Extension is promot-ing citizen-science efforts to support environmental moni-toring and research across the state. These programs aim to build data networks that provide data to the State Climate Office, the U.S. Drought Monitor authors, and others. The Community, Collaborative, Rain, Hail, and Snow network (CoCoRaHS, pronounced KO-ko-rozz) is a grassroots cit-izen-science collaboration to measure and map daily pre-cipitation. Having more information about how much rain and snow is falling can improve weather forecasts and even policy decisions.

To participate all you need is the official 4” rain gauge, a little bit of training, and a willingness to report via the CoCoRaHS website or phone app. The training is even available on-line, so you can access it from home. Being part of CoCoRaHS can benefit you, too. The network provides weather and cli-mate information of interest to farmers and gardeners, a Ne-vada-specific newsletter, and much more. For more info see: http://cocorahs.org

If you would like to participate, please sign up as a Volun-teer Weather Observer: http://cocorahs.org/Application.aspx Questions? contact any of the three state coordinators: Dr. Kerri Jean Ormerod, Cooperative Extension Program Leader

In depth: This month, a note from Kerri Jean Ormerod

Three-month outlook

For more information check out the Nevada State Climate Office webpage http://www.unr.edu/climate

Temperature Precipitation

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov

for Water, Climate, and Drought Hazards (kormerod@unr.edu), Andy Gorelow, a forecaster with the NWS in Las Ve-gas (andy.gorelow@noaa.gov), or Nina Oakley, an Assistant Research Climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center (nina.oakley@dri.edu). If you need a rain gauge, just contact Dr. Kerri Jean Ormerod, and she will send one to new participants in Nevada, free of charge.

Nevada has fewer than 100 active CoCoRaHS volunteers, and there are several counties with no participants.

We've got some rural areas to be sure, but Nevada has about as many stations as Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US, with less than half our population.

http://www.cocorahs.org/Maps/ViewMap.aspx

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov