Storm brings weird weather to valley again

Eric Leake and Ed Koch

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.

It was another unusual weather day in the valley Thursday as a storm from the Gulf of Alaska brought a thick coat of snow to Mount Charleston, dropped rain over much of the valley, pelted Henderson with pea-sized hail and created waterspouts at Lake Mead.

A day after Mount Charleston set a state record for total rainfall in a 24-hour period, 9.78 inches, the early winter-like storm Thursday kept the year-to-date rainfall for the valley just above normal, the National Weather Service said.

The good news for folks who like their weather a lot less soggy is that the weather service forecast for today and this weekend calls for partly cloudy skies with highs in the upper 60s and no rain until next week, when there will be a chance of showers.

Las Vegans awoke today to blue and sunny skies and a postcard picturesque view of Mount Charleston, where five inches of snow fell above 7,600 feet Thursday night.

"We actually got about two inches at our level to give us about four inches on the ground," said Ben Cooper, general manager of the Mount Charleston Lodge, which is at 7,700 feet of the mountain that peaks at 11,918 feet.

"It's starting to warm up here -- about 39 degrees this morning. Whether we will be real busy this weekend depends on how quick the snow goes (melts). The ski lodge makes its own snow, but it still will have to remain cold" for the snow to remain.

In the valley, the official rainfall at the weather service's McCarran International Airport gauge recorded 0.10 of an inch, bringing the year-to-date rainfall to 3.83 inches, 0.15 above normal.

The weather service said that number is considerably less rainfall than last year, when 5.29 inches had been recorded by Oct. 22.

In Mesquite 0.43 of an inch fell Thursday and 0.41 of an inch of precipitation was recorded at Red Rock.

Small hail stones pelted Henderson as Megan Allred and her three-year-old son Houston enjoyed the icy pellets that she described as "frozen peas." "I love it," Megan said as she and Houston held umbrellas -- Houston's featured images of Elmo -- and splashed in sidewalk puddles. "We're from Utah and this is nothing."

The burst of hail, which bounced off cars and quickly melted in the streets, 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."

The National Weather Service didn't have any reports of hail outside of Green Valley and Henderson.

And as far as the record books are concerned, it didn't hail in Green Valley or Henderson either because hail less than three quarters of an inch in diameter is not officially recorded as hail by the weather service, said weather service meteorologist Clay Morgan.

That's ironic because it was Morgan who called in a report of the hail occurrence to his office "after it fell on me when I got home."

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.

Morgan said the storm hit Southern California hard "and we got the spill over from it."

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.