Las Vegas finally cooling down

By Dave Toplikar (contact)

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009 | 6:35 a.m.

Las Vegas gets a taste of fall weather today, as temperatures climb this afternoon into only the high 70s — a dramatic drop from the last few days.

High temperatures will be 15 degrees cooler today than Tuesday, and be accompanied by a crisp northwest wind between 15 and 20 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

Overnight, temperatures in Las Vegas will fall to 58 degrees by early Thursday morning — the first low temperature below 60 degrees since April 29.

Temperatures in the coldest valleys of Inyo, Esmeralda, Lincoln and central Nye County will drop to or below freezing for the first time this season, the weather service said.

The cool weather is being brought in by a low pressure system moving from the southern Great Basin into the Rockies today, forecasters said.

Wind advisories and warnings for the Red Rock Canyon area were lifted at 4 a.m. today, the weather service said.

Some relatively brief, but strong downslope winds blew between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. through Red Rock Canyon, gusting to 72 mph, the weather service said. McCarran International Airport recorded gusts of 37 mph about 1 a.m.

By 6:15 a.m., winds were about 22 mph, gusting to 28 mph at McCarran.

Temperatures were starting out this morning at 68 degrees and were to climb to 73 by 9 a.m. and to 77 degrees by noon, forecasters said. Today's high will be 79 degrees at about 3 p.m., forecasters said. The normal high for today's date is 88 degrees and the record high was 101, set in 1978. The normal low is 63 and the record low is 47, set in 1982 and 1971.

After dropping to a low around 58 by early Thursday morning, temperatures were to climb to a high near 84 on Friday. Saturday's high will be 90. Then high temperatures will drop off into the upper 70s on Sunday and Monday.

Warm September

Although today will bring the coldest temperatures of the month, it appears that September 2009 will go down as the warmest September ever on record in Las Vegas since 1937, the weather service said.

Through Tuesday, the average temperature for Las Vegas for the month has been 86.7 degrees, which was 5.2 degrees above normal, the weather service said. Final numbers won't be computed until Oct. 1.

The current warmest September on record was September 1979, when the average temperture was 85.3 degrees, the weather service said.