A pick-up truck drives west along a flooded portion of East Winnie during a brief downpour Saturday afternoon. Photo by Brian Corley
Despite the 5 p.m. Saturday rain dump in Carson City, and the thunderstorms, windstorms, dust storms and lightning strikes peppering the area, refreshingly dry and cooler weather is ahead.
According to Steven Goldstein, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, the 100-degree-plus temperatures are gone from the forecast.
Today, there is a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, with temperatures predicted to reach the lower-90s.
"And Monday and Tuesday, there is no precipitation forecast, with temperatures in the lower to mid-90s," Goldstein said.
Yet, Saturday evening's rain poured at around an inch an hour, but so briefly, in spots, measurements were difficult. Estimates were three-eighths of an inch.
"The rain was so localized, " Goldstein said. "We did get some reports of a quarter inch."
Meanwhile, the weather has been moody, at best.,
Friday evening, Stagecoach experienced a microburst. Although no official wind speeds were called in to the weather service, nearby gusts were reported between 50 and 70 mph.
"You're never going to know exactly what happened unless you have something sitting there to measure the speeds," Goldstein said.
Karl Walquist, a spokesperson for Sierra Pacific Power Co., said six power poles snapped by high winds resulted in power losses to between 1,000 and 1,500 people between Dayton and Stagecoach. Power was lost at 3:40 p.m., and the company had it restored by 4 p.m. through recircuiting. About 200 people in the Stagecoach area had to wait for a pole to be replaced and wires up, until their power came on about 6 a.m.
Walquist also said Sierra Pacific experienced small, localized power outages due to storms on Saturday.
But Nick Ebsen, a 9-year resident of Stagecoach, who missed the microburst, saw the aftermath.
"(There was) just some stuff thrown around," Ebsen said. "We noticed a mobile home completely demolished at a sales lot. The frame was upside down, the wheels were up in the air."
Goldstein explained the wind at the edges of a microburst will curl back up with a lifting force at the sides.
"The upward motion of the wind can cause damage," Goldstein said.
And Saturday, Stagecoach got hit again, this time with a dust storm.
The fourth dust storm Ebsen has seen since spring, this dust storm lasted for about 15 minutes.
"We were in the house," Ebsen said. "We could barely see across the street. We could barely see the front of the car."
Ebsen said a dust storm of such severity is fairly infrequent.
During a dust storm, silt and dust is suspended in the air by the wind, sometimes creating blinding situations, like an earlier windstorm this season that closed Highway 50 in Stagecoach.