Heavy May Snow Hits The Sierra Nevada; Concordia Below -70C (-94F) for 10-Days; + Cooling In The Tropical Pacific, La Niña Looms
El Niño is fading, fast. Another La Niña winter (the fourth of the past five years) is all-but guaranteed. The COLD TIMES are returning.
Heavy May Snow Hits The Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada's highest single-day snowfall total for the season came on Sunday, May 5.
'Who had that on their winter bingo card?' asked the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab on X, with the accompanying video:
A historic Winter Storm Warning was issued for Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes, the first-ever issuance in May, and Mother Nature duly delivered, dropping 26.4 inches on Sunday, beating the season's previous snowiest day, the 23.8 inches from March 1.
Rare flakes hit the lower elevations too, with inches accumulating on the Eastern Slope down from Mount Rose (<6,000 ft).
The disruption was widespread, from power outages to the closure of mountain highways—including those near Lake Tahoe, such as Interstate 80:
“It's still looking like winter in the California mountains. A late-season storm dropped snow in the California Sierra mountains, closing I-80 for multiple hours due to multiple spinouts and collisions on Saturday.” — AccuWeather on X.
Temperatures also fell, into the low 40s (F) for many which some 20F below the seasonal norm. Locations along the Sierra Crest dropped to near 0F (-17.8C).
"One of the coldest May storms in recent history is moving through NorCal," posted Colin McCarthy to X on May 4, an Atmospheric Scientist at The University of California, Davis. Looking ahead, the first half of the new week offers little respite:
Concordia Below -70C (-94F) for 10-Days
Antarctica's anomalous cold is persisting for its eighth month on the trot.
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