A cold front moving through the region will drop our temperatures into the mid-50s on Friday, and could give us some showers early in the morning, but strong winds will likely keep most of the precipitation up in the mountains. Speaking of the mountains, snow levels will drop to or near Lake Tahoe, although you will likely have to get higher up in the mountains before any snow accumulations occur. There is a chance that travel over the mountains could be impacted, although by mid-day any snow should clear out.

Reno’s high will drop to the mid-50s, but will rebound quickly through the weekend, into the 60s Saturday and the 70s Sunday.

Steve wondered why our weather moves in from the west when the lows are to our west and the highs are to the east. He makes a good observation (our winds tend to come out of the southwest during storms), but there’s more to play than just where the lows and highs are. First of all, the winds at the surface will be dependent on highs and lows at the surface, whereas the big lows that you see on the satellite that bring us our storms are mid and upper level features, thousands of feet above ground level. But even that doesn’t explain the phenomena fully. I’ll do so tomorrow.