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Tom Gardner

Thursday, Sept. 2, 1999 | 5:15 a.m.

Nevada Climate: Hot and cool, wet and dry and certainly smoky

RENO, Nev. - August was a month of climatological variables ranging from unusually wet to unseasonably dry and hot to cool. The only consistent note was smoke in the north.

"The big news was the smoke," state Climatologist John James said on Thursday. "The fires that ravaged a good deal of Nevada and the smoke that plagued the area."

Temperatures covered their usual broad range, climbing to the 110-115-degree mark in the southern part of the state and falling to the low 20s in the northeast.

"An unusual cold air mass closed out the month," James said, sending Elko's low on Tuesday to 29 degrees.

It was the only reporting station that fell below freezing although Winnemucca came close that same day with a low of 33.

Elko, Ely, Winnemucca and Las Vegas all averaged a little below normal temperatures while Reno was just a fraction above, even though it failed to reach the 100-degree mark all month. Ely, Elko and Winnemucca also fell shy of 100. Las Vegas topped out at 106 on the 27th.

Precipitation ranged from a monsoonal 1.24 inched in Ely - 0.41 of an inch above normal - and Reno's 0.82 of an inch, more than twice its August norm of 0.32 of an inch to 0.16 of an inch in Winnemucca and 0.19 of an inch in Elko. That left Winnemucca 0.29 of an inch short for the month and Elko was 0.46 of an inch on the minus side.

Las Vegas received half of its 0.49 average with 0.25 of an inch of rain, 0.21 of an inch of it on the 10th.

Despite the heavy winter snows in the Sierra, James said some western valleys have received half their annual average precipitation with just a month left in the current water year.

Parts of the eastern Sierra and southern Nevada are at 125 percent of average or more, he said.