Heavy Snow — S Sierra Mtns, California

2019-01-16 to 2019-01-17 · S Sierra Mtns, California

Event narrative

The Green Mountain SNOTEL (7900 feet) picked up 19.0 inches of new snow.

Wider weather episode

A strong low pressure system with a deep moisture fetch pushed into central California during the afternoon of January 16 and brought moderate to heavy precipitation along with strong winds to much of the area through the afternoon of January 17. Several reports of roadway flooding were received during the morning of January 17 when the heaviest precipitation occurred. Flash flooding and debris flows were reported in the Ferguson Fire burn area in Mariposa County and State Route 140 was closed for over 11 hours. The precipitation turned to showers and isolated thunderstorms during the afternoon of January 17. One thunderstorm produced a tornado east of Clovis which was rated as EF-1 following a storm survey of the damage it produced. Most of the San Joaquin Valley and Kern County Deserts picked up between half an inch to an inch of rain while the Southern Sierra Nevada had 2 to 4 inches of liquid precipitation and the Kern County Mountains had 1.5 to 3 inches of liquid precipitation. The precipitation mainly fell as snow above 7000 feet where several locations in the higher elevations of the Southern Sierra Nevada above 7000 feet picked up 10 to 20 inches of new snowfall. There were also several reports of post-frontal wind gusts exceeding 50 mph in the Kern County Mountains and Deserts while a few low impact indicator sites had gusts exceeding 65 mph.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 793416. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.