Las Vegas’ “Rainy Season,” Las Vegas Ski Resort January 28
Las Vegas, Nevada, is famously dry in the middle of the desert. Most people think of the desert as a place where things are dry as a bone - barely supporting life as we know it. The truth is, everything needs water. It rains here. It even snows here upon occasion (though it almost never sticks to the ground anywhere near the Strip.) In fact, it snows here every year on the mountain. That’s why we even have our very own little ski resort, The Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort (owned by the same people that own the Park City Mountain Resort, incidentally.)
The last couple of nights we’ve been experiencing one of two parts of what I think tend to generally constitute our “rainy seasons” here in Las Vegas. The Winter portion of that takes place at any time between December and February and usually happens when conditions in the Pacific Ocean cause a low pressure area to set up off the California coast and allow for sweeping bands of moisture to move in, resulting in the closest thing Las Vegas has to an actual “season” of rain. This is because it’s one system that’s affecting our weather for several days, as opposed to just several hours. This may or may not happen more than once or twice during the winter. Slow, steady rain is great for us around here just like it is anywhere. The difference for guys like me is that whenever it rains for a night or two here in Las Vegas, forty minutes away up on Mount Charleston, they’ve probably gotten a half a foot or more of fresh powder. That means it’s skiing/snowboarding time, baby!! Tomorrow I’m heading up to Mount Charleston on what will probably be the best conditions day up there in a couple of years. *crosses fingers*
[The other "rainy season" is when we get a monsoonal flow of moisture in late July and August that causes brief thunderstorms to zoom across the valley floor, often times causing flash flooding in some places while other parts of the valley remain bone dry. This slow, steady sprinkling rain is where it's at, for sure.]