Valley gets its first taste of rain this year

Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2003 | 10:59 a.m.

Dark skies lingered past sunrise as the first rain of the year fell in trace amounts across the valley. In the surrounding mountains, it fell as snow.

By 8:40 a.m. the Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) at McCarran International Airport measured one-hundredth of an inch of rainfall, according to the National Weather Service. The temperature was 55 degrees.

"The low pressure system has been around us (the Las Vegas Valley) all morning," said meteorologist Steve Downs. "You can see it up on Mount Potosi and Mount Charleston."

A uniform sheet of clouds moved into the valley from Arizona around sunrise, obscuring mountain peaks and dropping rain. Downs didn't expect more than a tenth of an inch to fall in the valley before the clouds moved northwest over Mount Charleston and dissipated.

The valley normally averages 4.49 inches of rain a year. But last year the valley received just 1.44 inches, the eighth driest year since the Weather Service began keeping records in 1937.

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