Southern Nevadans hail the cool, wet weather

Eric Leake

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 | 9:59 a.m.

Neither rain nor hail were going to stop Megan and Houston Allred from enjoying the unusually cool weather Thursday evening in Henderson.

Allred and her three-year-old son took umbrellas -- Houston's Elmo-themed -- and were splashing in sidewalk puddles as soon as the sky stopped dumping ice pellets that Allred described as "frozen peas."

"I love it," she said. "We're from Utah and this is nothing."

All sorts of precipitation fell throughout Southern Nevada.

On Mount Charleston, 5 inches of snow fell above 7,600 feet, creating a postcard picturesque view from the valley this morning. The snow came one day after the mountain set a state record for total rainfall in a 24-hour period, 9.78 inches, the National Weather Service said.

The official rainfall at the Weather Service's McCarran International Airport gauge Thursday was 0.10 of an inch, bringing the year-to-date rainfall to 3.83 inches, 0.15 above normal.In Henderson, hail bounced off cars and quickly melted in the streets. The burst was something Bill McManus, a Las Vegas resident for nine years, had not seen before.

"It was sort of like snow but I wouldn't want to be standing under it," McManus said. So he waited out the burst in his car before going into a Green Valley Starbucks to get a drink.

But the phenomenon was not a total surprise. McManus said he's used to valley weather that changes "in the blink of an eye."

Stranger than hail were reports of waterspouts over Lake Mead.

Weather Service meteorologist Andrew Gorelow said he was not certain if they were funnel clouds or if they were waterspouts that touched the lake.

In either case, they were fairly weak and highly unusual, he said.

"I know there have been reports of tornados, but waterspouts over Lake Mead I haven't heard of before," Gorelow said.

He said the hail and rain pulled down cool air, dropping temperatures Thursday evening into the low 40s. The odd weather was the final act of a low pressure system passing over the valley.

Only small amounts of rain registered through much of the valley, with 0.24 inches in Boulder City and 0.2 inches at the Las Vegas Beltway and Buffalo Drive, according to the Clark County Regional Flood Control District.

The weather service forecast for today and the weekend is partly cloudy with highs in the upper 60s. No rain is expected again until next week, when there's a chance of showers.

Sun reporter Ed Koch contributed to this story.