Spring has sprung: Valley residents wonder what happened to winter

Springtime. Ah, a time of renewal, a time to recharge our batteries after the long, hard, freezing cold slog of winter.

Winter? What's that?

Winter seems to have skipped us this year.

The official temperature in Las Vegas dropped to 32 degrees or below exactly zero times this winter, which ended at 10:14 p.m. Monday. It did freeze three times in early December, but that wasn't officially winter yet.

But January? Not a single freeze. That's only the fifth time that has happened since record keeping began in 1937. All five have happened since 1995.

National Weather Service officials say January was the seventh-warmest January on record, if you go by average temperatures. It was the sixth-warmest ever if you go by the overnight low temps.

It's a similar story for February.

It's been dry, too. No snow. Almost no rain. Just 0.24 inches all winter long.

Blame forces beyond your control. The jet stream. La Niña.

"It was an extremely mild winter," said local horticulturist Norm Schilling, who said the trees are reacting accordingly.

"They did seem to leaf out much earlier than they have in the past," he said.

The citrus trees are blooming, the almonds and apricots are already growing.

"The plants respond to the weather," he said, "not the calendar."

The early blooming has resulted in an early allergy season for some people, though Schilling said it's unlikely that it will mean a worse season than usual. Most of the allergen-producing trees are planted, not native, so it's not like there's going to be more of them than usual. The ones that are already here are just blooming earlier.

Chris Stachelski, a meteorologist with the weather service, said the last freeze we have here is usually in February. Records show that it has come as late as April 12, in 1967.

But this season -- so far at least -- December was the coldest month.

"It was one of those winters where everything was front-loaded with the cold," he said.

In late fall and early winter, La Niña kept things cool. But by the time winter was in full swing, the jet stream had shifted from where you would normally expect it. That kept the storms and low temperatures away from us.

The winter was the second-driest ever in Nevada, Stachelski said.

J.C. Davis, with the Las Vegas Valley Water District, said the local rainfall doesn't matter all that much, though, when it comes to Lake Mead, our local water supply.

You could double the average annual rainfall in Las Vegas -- a tad over 4 inches -- and it wouldn't raise the lake level enough to even notice it.

"We go from dry to bone dry," he said. "That's our range."

But snowfall in the western Rockies? That's what matters most.

Which still doesn't bring good news. The snowpack is less than 80 percent of what's normal. Davis said that means the lake level probably will drop this year, maybe 12 to 15 feet by year's end.

That comes after the lake level rose three times that much last year. The snowpack was heavier than usual.

Stachelski, the meteorologist, said that's probably one reason we had a mild summer last year. All that snow helped keep temperatures down.

But another reason we topped 110 degrees only once in June and once in July last year was because a high pressure system settled in over Texas, far east of where it usually sits.

So, to sum up the weather in Las Vegas over the last year: a mild summer, followed by a mild winter.

If you could apply the law of averages to specific situations -- and you can't, ask any statistician -- you would say we're in for a rough one this year.

Which brings us to the official forecast, from the National Weather Service.

Stachelski said the folks at weather service headquarters are forecasting a 52 percent chance that we'll have a warmer than usual summer.

Which means there's a 48 percent chance we won't.

Which means it's a coin flip.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.