Conditions will dry out and warm up as we go through the rest of the week. A slight chance of Wednesday morning showers (rain or snow) will give way to a sunny Thursday with high temperatures climbing into the mid-60s, and they could reach the 70s by the weekend.

Monday’s “Inside Slider” snowstorm did a curious thing as it dropped down from the north. The bands of snow were almost non-existent until it got just to our north, after which they strengthened very rapidly. This is not unusual for this type of system, and in fact it is almost predictable (as if anything about an Inside Slider is predictable.) But there’s a good reason why it seems to happen this way more often than not. The Sierra to the north of Reno are not very tall (Beckwourth Pass on Highway 70 east of Hallelujah is barely 5,000’ high), but the mountains get much taller once you get just to the east of Reno. This increase in elevation creates much more lift as the flow comes down to our region, allowing a weak band of precipitation to “blow up” when it gets in our neighborhood.