Debris Flow — Lyon, Nevada

2023-01-10 · near Wilson Canyon, Lyon, Nevada

Event narrative

A massive landslide on State Route 208 through Wilson Canyon forced the closure of the highway for an indeterminate amount of time. The Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) says the rockslide was likely caused by the recent heavy precipitation. The debris fell across roughly 400 feet of roadway around 6:00 PM Tuesday night, NDOT estimates.

There were no immediate indications of any injuries due to the landslide.

Wider weather episode

A stronger winter storm produced several waves of new snow and high winds that impacted the region during the third week of January. A relatively long-duration atmospheric river from 9-11 January supported forcing and moisture for the first in the series of winter systems that brought heavy Sierra snowfall with accumulations ranging from 3-6 feet across the Sierra Crest. The heaviest snowfall occurred in Mono County over the 3-day period with heavy, unrelenting snowfall that forced a prolonged closure of US-395 from Bridgeport to Bishop from late morning January 9th through the afternoon January 11th. On January 9th, heavy rain across the Lake Tahoe Basin changed to heavy snow below 7000 ft, leading to snowfall totals ranging from 8-20 inches through January 11th. Over 2 feet of snowfall was observed in parts of northeast California above 5000 feet. On January 9th mostly rain fell across western Nevada with storm total precipitation amounts ranging between 0.75-2 inches across much of Douglas, Carson City, southern Washoe, Mineral, and Lyon counties. The heavier rainfall across those contributed to a major rockfall and subsequently lead to an extended road closure on SR-208 in Wilson Canyon (Figure 4). Reports of areal flooding included I-80 near Lockwood, NN, Geiger Grade at Toll Rd in the Virginia City highlands, and along US-395 south of Reno with flooding from Steamboat Creek spilling over Towne Road. The changeover to snow in western Nevada arrived during the morning commute on January 10th which led to several related traffic incidents that included a 19-car pile-up on the Galena Bridge on I-580.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.8195, -119.2042)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1086435. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.