Cold low pressure digging south from the Gulf of Alaska brought isolated high winds to the Spring Mountains and a few thunderstorms to the Mojave Desert.
Every event with a place to put it; 1 filed by county or forecast zone are drawn at its center, in a lighter ring. Tap one for its entry below.
Deaths and injuries are direct and indirect together, as the offices filed them. Damage is property and crops in the dollars of the year, not adjusted for inflation, and only where an office estimated it.
The episode as NWS VEF wrote it up.
Cold low pressure digging south from the Gulf of Alaska brought isolated high winds to the Spring Mountains and a few thunderstorms to the Mojave Desert.
The local office's own words before the first event, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.
NWS Las Vegas, NV wrote its last area forecast discussion before the first event at Mar 29, 1:55 PM PST, 1 hour 55 minutes earlier.
Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Las Vegas NV 255 PM PDT Wed Mar 29 2023 .SYNOPSIS...The upper low responsible for the heavy snow in the Sierra and Spring Mountains will continue to push east and southeast through Thursday. This will lead to additional showers and isolated thunderstorms Thursday afternoon, mainly across Mohave County. Gusty southwest winds will taper off this evening with some breezy to windy conditions again developing Thursday afternoon. && .SHORT TERM...through Thursday. The deep upper low responsible for the heavy snow in the Sierra and Spring Mountains is currently spinning off the San Fransisco coast. This low will continue to track south and east and is forecast to become an open wave and push through Nevada on Thursday. The southern Sierra received between 12-18 inches of snow overnight, but has since stopped as of this morning, but as the low pushes inland this evening, we can expected to see snow increasing once again. The winter storm warning remains in place until 11pm and will go ahead and let that ride. In the Spring Mountains, heavy snow started mid morning and has been snowing heavy much of this afternoon. The main moisture plume continues to take aim at the Spring Mountains leading to an excellent upslope scenario. Heavy snow should continue for the next few hours or until the moisture plume sags south of the area. The current winter storm warning remains in place until 5pm, but that may need to be adjusted depending on conditions. Elsewhere, light rain will occur in the valleys with most areas seeing rain totals generally less than a tenth of an inch. Shower chances will decrease over most areas overnight, but as the main dynamics associated with the trough move overhead Thursday combined with afternoon heating additional showers along with isolated thunderstorms will be possibly, especially over Mohave County. Overall, winds will be lighter, but a few gusts to around 40 mph will still be possible over Mohave County, however, at this time winds do not look widespread enough for additional wind advisories. Temperatures will remain rather cool and will be about 5-7 degrees colder than today which is about 20 degrees below normal. .LONG TERM...Friday through Tuesday. Period starts out under a dry northwest flow Friday with both the GEFS/ECMWF Ensemble showing a weak shortwave moving into southern California. This system will pass over southern California on its way into Arizona with only a noticable increase in clouds Friday/Friday night. Region will get a brief reprieve from the cooler than normal temperatures over the weekend with readings closer to normal. Next cold, deep longwave trough will start to slowly sag south from the Gulf of Alaska/western Canada Sunday through Tuesday. Cluster analysis for Sunday-Tuesday indicates greatest variance among the ensembles is with the position/timing of the trough axis. Ensembles look to be in much greater agreement in the eventual depth of the trough as the variance is quite a bit less. So, what does this mean for eventual impacts. Should see some light showers return to the southern Great Basin late Sunday- Tuesday. Strongest winds will probably occur on Monday, while temperatures fall back below normal. Should be warm enough this weekend to start eroding away at some of that historic snowpack. For those venturing out into the wilderness, some creek and stream may be running higher than normal. && .AVIATION...For Harry Reid...Southwest winds will continue through the remainder of the afternoon with gusts 30-35 knots. Cloud bases 8-10k feet could lower to 6kft with showers developing around the Las Vegas Valley. Partial clearing and raising cloud bases early this evening along with decreasing winds speeds to 15-25 knots. Southwest winds will persist Thursday morning with cloud bases lowering to 5-6 kft with showers developing again in the vicinity of the terminal area late Thursday morning through the afternoon. For the rest of southern Nevada, northwest Arizona and southeast California...An incoming Pacific System will slowly move across the region through Thursday. Southwest winds gusting 25 to 35 knots at regional TAF sites through the remainder of the afternoon. A band of precipitation will move over southern Nevada and northwest Arizona this afternoon bringing mountain obscurement and scattered to broken cloud bases 6-10 kft MSL. Partial clearing will occur across most of the region this evening except near KBIH where scattered snow showers will develop over the southern Sierra and Owens Valley overnight. Southwest winds will also decrease this evening to less than 15 knots except the Las Vegas Valley where 15-25 knots will be common much of the night. Scattered showers will develop across much of the region Thursday with snow levels near 4500 feet MSL and scattered to broken cloud bases 6-8 kft MSL. && SHORT TERM...Gorelow LONG TERM...Pierce AVIATION...Salmen For more forecast information...see us on our webpage: https://weather.gov/lasvegas or follow us on Facebook and Twitter
PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LAS VEGAS NV
114 PM PDT WED MAR 29 2023
..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..
1156 AM NON-TSTM WND GST 12 NNW TWENTYNINE PALMS 34.29N 116.15W
03/29/2023 M58 MPH SAN BERNARDINO CA MESONET
AT 1156 AM PDT THE TWENTYNINE PALMS AIRPORT
RECORDED A GUST OF 58 MPH.
&&
MSThe Las Vegas radar (KESX), 176 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the first event began at 20:16 UTC.
1 high wind, 1 thunderstorm wind. Local standard time, as filed.
This wind occurred 3 miles NE of Mount Charleston.
After NWS Directive 10-1605, the rules offices file Storm Data by.
Every storm in Nevada in 2023Every state in 2023This day in weather historyWarnings in Nevada, March 2023
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, compiled from the National Weather Service’s monthly Storm Data. Complete through 2026-06; NCEI adds each month about 75 days after it ends and revises past years a few times a year. Rebuilt 2026-09-24. Each event’s entry at NCEI: 1089520, 1089521.