Area feels chill wind of El Nino yet again

This May will go down in Southern Nevada's weather history as one of the coolest and windiest in 67 years.

The average temperature this month has been 69.2 degrees. Last year the temperature averaged 81.6 degrees -- making it the hottest May on record, forecaster Ron McQueen said Tuesday.

In 1997, according to National Weather Service records, Las Vegas sweltered through its first 100-degree day on May 13.

Not this year. Tuesday it snowed four inches in central Nevada's Goldfield and six inches fell in Manhattan and Austin, both in Northern Nevada, McQueen said.

As for wind, the average speed in May so far has been 12.8 mph, compared to 13.7 mph in 1955, the windiest ever recorded, and 13.4 mph in 1989 and 1990. The National Weather Service extended a wind advisory all day Tuesday, as if to prove the point.

The coldest May on record averaged 66.2 degrees in 1953.

McQueen said Tuesday the chilly and windy weather comes from El Nino, a complex pattern in the Pacific Ocean combining warmer waters and streaming wind shifts that send storms crashing into Southern California and Nevada.

Californians watched homes slide off cliffs in February and March, while Southern Nevada received an entire year's worth of rain. Although May in Las Vegas is usually the driest month of the year, a tenth of an inch on May 14 brought the total rainfall this year to 4.36 inches.

The normal average rainfall for a year here is 4.13 inches.

Meteorologists predict that El Nino's sting will continue until the end of June, McQueen said. For the Las Vegas Valley, the weather will stay unsettled.

"We can't put all our weather eggs in El Nino's basket," McQueen said.

A ridge of low pressure crouched in the upper atmosphere, sitting over the Pacific Northwest, should pounce on the Great Basin -- with Nevada at its center -- by the weekend. While the local weather remains unclear, it may warm up.

Southern Nevada will breeze through May with more wind and temperatures in the high 70s and mid-80s. A chance for rain could come the first week of June, McQueen said.

Following El Nino, summers have sizzled throughout the valley well into the fall months, McQueen said. He expects that pattern to continue, "if we ever get out of this cool pattern."

The end of El Nino brings some good news wrapped in a weaker prediction for heavy flooding during the typical Southwest monsoon season -- from the end of June through October. Monsoon storms should be fewer or later, McQueen said.

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