After a prolonged period of warm weather, some chilly conditions will settle in for the weekend. A low pressure center has dropped into the eastern side of the Silver State, which will bring cool temperatures in the 60s to the Reno area, and will leave an unsettled airmass that will likely spring up isolated to scattered rain showers, with a slight chance that there could be some thunderstorms popping up here and there.

As we move through the weekend and into the next, the low gradually fills and moves off to the northeast, and high temperatures will creep back up into the 70s, with only a slight chance of getting any showers, mainly in the afternoons.

Most people think (logically) that a plant, such as a tomato plant will cool down to the same temperature as the air, and therefore if the air doesn’t get colder than freezing, then neither will the tomato plant. But thermal physics doesn’t work that way, and you ignore thermal physics at your (tomato’s) peril. On clear nights radiational heat loss can cause solid objects to cool several degrees colder than the air, so if the forecast calls for a clear calm night with lows within 10 degrees of freezing, it might behoove you to cover up any sensitive plants.