Sierras giving MWO a run for its money.

[Neil]

A widespread heavy precipitation and high wind event roared through most of the west coast today. The crest of the Sierras played host to some incredible winds. Mammoth mountain ski area had gusts as high as 130 mph, while a remote station near lake tahoe had gusts to 163 mph. Yesterday, as the storm first made its pressence felt, another station logged 141 mph.
Valleys got into the action as well with lots of wind damage and some very impressive low elevation gusts in the 80 mph range. While these winds don't come close to good old 231mph they do represent a very impressive event.

Here is one set of observations from Ward Mountain near lake tahoe.

MN DY Hour Temp | Wind |
av mx mn | Dir Speed Gst |

1 4 1600 24 29 22 262 79 140
1 4 1500 29 30 29 227 110 158
1 4 1400 29 29 28 218 105 153
1 4 1300 29 29 27 226 6999 165
1 4 1200 27 27 26 230 56 118
1 4 1100 27 28 26 229 86 163
1 4 1000 26 27 26 224 79 127
1 4 0900 26 27 26 222 71 113
1 4 0800 27 27 27 210 79 124
1 4 0700 27 28 27 206 86 129
1 4 0600 27 28 27 206 73 112

You can link directly to this data as well as other storm reports from the Reno, NV NWS site:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/rev/remotedata/ward.php

There are some good storm reports as well:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/rev/lsr/lsr_list.php

-Neil

[Bill O]

Impressive. Is that 165mph gust bad data? Either way, 165/163, those are big numbers.

[kimmarg]

I don't know about the 163 being bad data or not, but this system moved through the Salt Lake city region with gusts to 101 at 11,000ft (station id AMB) station id SLIDE at the I-80 pass over the sierras hit 99mph (or was it knots, i forget) on Thursday afternoon. No matter how you cut it a very strong system!

[treant985]

It's too bad they don't have more stations on the high elevations. They've got an automated precip station at Blackcap Basin (10300ft) that reported 6" of liquid precip in a 24-hour period. On the noaa website, they used a 12:1 ratio to estimate 72 inches of snow for that location. The USA's record for 24 hours is 75.8", so either way it's near record territory.

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/get...68&raw=0&dbn=m

0400 AM HEAVY SNOW BLACKCAP BASIN SNOTEL 37.07N 118.77W
01/05/2008 E71.3 INCH FRESNO CA MESONET

10300 FEET. ESTIMATE USING A 12 TO 1 RATIO.