Southern Nevadans shiver on coldest night of year

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.

On Monday, the coldest night in a year, 15 people were turned away from the Salvation Army's shelter on Owens Avenue west of Main Street by 8:30 p.m.

"We're full, we're maxed out," said Doug Ketring as he directed the lucky ones inside. The elderly, families with children and the disabled are taken first, he explained. A total of 217 people found shelter there.

One man in a white wool cap and gray jacket who got a spot on the Salvation Army's floor said he rode a CAT bus all night long Sunday to keep warm.

Children in short sleeves and T-shirts, playing tennis and basketball in waning sunlight, disappeared from the courts after sunset as the thermometer dropped.

The low temperature was recorded at 30 degrees, above what The National Weather Service had predicted.

The Weather Service had issued a freeze warning from midnight to 8 a.m. today for temperatures that were expected to plummet into the 20s overnight.

"It'll be the coldest night of the year," Weather Service meteorologist Jon Adair said after issuing the warning.

He said the temperatures will stay 10 to 15 degrees below normal until the weekend as arctic air arrived from the north after winds blasted Southern Nevada Saturday and Sunday.

Adair predicted that McCarran International Airport, the official weather site, would record 28 degrees. Other parts of the valley, especially the foothills of the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas, were expected to chill in the lower 20s.

The lowest temperatures recorded in Las Vegas on Nov. 29 and 30 were 21 degrees and 22 degrees, respectively, both in 1948.

Last year no night dropped below 30 degrees in either November or December, Adair said.

Juliann Dwyer moved to Las Vegas in 1986 from New York to get away from the snow and ice.

"I'll never forget the first winter in 1987 when we had snow," Dwyer said.

When it freezes, Dwyer said, the surface of her swimming pool freezes solid.

"It always freezes, the water, the grass is always freezing," said Anthony Saxton, a 20-year Las Vegas resident who moved here from San Diego.

Certainly it isn't the coldest night Las Vegas has ever recorded.

On Dec. 23, 1998, the famous fountains at Caesars Palace were turned off when the temperature dipped to 26 degrees, forming ice on water jets and causing the water to spray in different directions.

The record low for Dec. 23 was 11 degrees in 1990, Weather Service records show.

The winter of 1990 is the year palm trees at the Mirage froze and the resort painted them green.

Jay Plaggenkuhle remembers that winter well because he re-designed the Mirage's landscape after the freeze.

"You could almost ice skate at the water feature," he said.

"We replanted all the sumacs," Plaggenkuhle said as he was buying two live Christmas trees at Home Depot.

Home Depot's nursery still had several racks of petunias, cyclamen, chrysanthemums and snap dragons among the fir trees and wreaths and they'll survive unless it goes down between 10-20 degrees, clerk Jane Laing said.

Laing arrived in Las Vegas shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and found a job after leaving the San Francisco Bay area.

"I'm warm, I'm layered," Laing said, wearing a light blue parka. "I worked out here all summer in the heat."

It's been a long time since Las Vegas Valley dipped into the single digits. The all-time low recorded here is 8 degrees on Jan. 13, 1963, and Jan. 25, 1937, Weather Service records show.

For George Boyle, five years in Las Vegas after a lifetime in Pittsburgh, the cold didn't bother him.

But the winds sabotaged his Christmas decorating.

"I put the Christmas lights up and they came right back down," Boyle said.

The Weather Service urged residents to protect pets, plants and pipes for the next few nights.

Puppies, kittens and older pets should be sheltered from the cold.

Potted plants should be sheltered or moved indoors, Adair said.

Sprinkler pipes should be covered and automatic sprinklers should be turned off overnight.