After all the excitement of the mid-week storms, it now looks like we are going to enter into an extended dry spell that will take us through the rest of January, and in all likelihood well into February. Temperatures will be on the rise, climbing into the low 50s Saturday, the upper 50s on Sunday and Monday, and it should top out in the 60s on Tuesday. The big ridge of high pressure responsible for the extended dry stretch will be flat enough to allow some level of cloudiness, but will also keep the storm track well to our north.

On another note, forecasting around here is almost always a challenge, but Ed was particularly curious about this: “I was wondering why the range in temperatures in Virginia City between daytime highs and nighttime lows is narrower than in Reno? Their high never seems to be as high which is understandable since they’re nearly two thousand feet higher in elevation, but what puzzles me in particular is that their low is almost always warmer then Reno’s low for the same date. Why is that?”

The reason for that is topographic. In our mountainous region, we almost always get cold air pooling into the lower basins. Virginia City sits up on the side of a mountain, so when the cold air starts to pool, it drops below the historic town.