THIS summer has delivered heat wave after heat wave for much of the nation, but on August 24 it got contrarian and delivered a trace amount of snow to California mountains.
Snow was measured in small amounts in and around Lake Tahoe, with National Weather Service precipitation data showing accumulations of 0.15 inches north of Stanislaus National Forest to 0.03 inches north in the Tahoe National Forest, NBC News reported.
Winter wonderland
It’s unlikely to stick around, but it provided for a day of winter wonderland scenery in a country cooked by relentless heat. The day in the Sierra Nevada Mountains started out rainy as wet roads were blamed for a vehicle collision on Interstate 80 that prompted the temporary closure of westbound lanes, according to the California Department of Transportation. The interstate runs through the Tahoe National Forest en route to the San Francisco Bay Area.
About 140 miles to the north, the annual Burning Man festival faced a second year of weather serious enough to prompt organisers to close the event’s main gate on August 24 morning to those arriving by vehicle ahead of the first day of festivities starting on August 25.
Attendees were urged to delay their arrivals so as not to clog up roadways leading to the venue in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, though the gate was opened later in the afternoon.
Later in the day, the Palisades Tahoe snow resort in the town of Olympic Valley was the site of falling snow, an August rarity captured on multiple cell phone videos.
The morning temperatures were likely to be in the low 30s, prompting the service to issue warnings about a potential “hard freeze,” which could destroy seasonal vegetation and create patches of ice on roadways. Temperatures were expected to be 15 to 20 degrees below normal, the weather service said.
