Apparently, according to the number of questions we received about the rain, many of you are wondering the same thing. But for those of you who haven’t heard what went on weather-wise in Las Vegas the week before Christmas, here it is in a QoD nutshell.
A quick peek at Today’s News the week of December 16 through 23 shows that on December 16, sledding was banned on Mt. Charleston, "due to an unseasonal lack of snow." But after that, the sky began to fall.
The very next afternoon, inclement weather caused some flight delays in and out of McCarran International Airport and that night, a number of scheduled outdoor events were cancelled. It rained on and off over the next couple of days, till on Monday December 20, the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood watch through Tuesday afternoon for southern Nevada.
The next morning, the Red Rock scenic loop road and the Visitor Center closed due to debris on the road from flooding. That afternoon, Snow and falling trees have brought down power lines at Mt. Charleston and caused power outages all over the mountain. Also, the Clark County manager issued an emergency declaration to deal with threats of flooding.
On Tuesday the 22nd, Clark County issued an avalanche advisory for the Kyle Canyon area of Mt. Charleston and officials began urging residents to evacuate. Upwards of 10 feet of snow had fallen and power wasn’t predicted to resume for at least a week. On the 23rd, officials were still urging Kyle Canyon residents to evacuate to a Red Cross shelter at the closest elementary school.
By Christmas Eve, the rain had tailed off, but to answer your question: Yes, the impact of the storms on Lake Mead was measurable -- negligible, but still measurable. This rainfall raised the lake level by 1,400 acre-feet, or 450 million gallons, or two-tenths of an inch. It would take five such storms to raise Mead a whole inch, and 1,500 of them to raise the lake the 130 feet it’s fallen over the course of the drought that so far has stretched from 1999 to 2009.
But don’t forget, Lake Mead is fed by the Colorado River, which is fed by the watershed of the western Rocky Mountains, which is fed by the snowpack that accumulates in the winter. So far this year, the Colorado snowpack is at 150%, its highest in nearly a decade. But it’ll go down fast during a dry spell and there’s a long way to go till spring.
