Sunny with highs in 70s for Las Vegas

By Dave Toplikar

Monday, May 24, 2010 | 5:25 a.m.

Las Vegas will get mostly sunny skies today, but afternoon temperatures will be almost 20 degrees below normal, reaching only into the low 70s, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures will warm into the low 80s on Tuesday before another Pacific storm begins to form off the West Coast, the weather service said.

That system will bring a chance of showers to the southern Sierra late Tuesday into Wednesday, forecasters said.

The weather service said the cold front that moved in Sunday brought in a trace of rain and helped helped Las Vegas set a new record low maximum temperature, also called the coldest high temperature, for Sunday's date.

In Las Vegas, the high temperature reached only 63 degrees at McCarran International Airport, the offical climate station for Las Vegas. That temperature, 27 degrees below normal, broke the previous record low maximum of 67 degrees, set back in 2008.

On Sunday, several locations in area mountains reported snow, including Mount Charleston, which received about 4 inches, the weather service reported.

Rain reports around the Las Vegas Valley for Sunday included a trace of rain at McCarran and .04 of an inch at North Las Vegas Airport.

At 4:56 a.m. today, the temperature at McCarran International Airport was 51 degrees. The normal low for today's date is 65 degrees. The record low was 46 degrees, set in 1939.

Around the valley just before 5 a.m., temperatures were 51 degrees at North Las Vegas Airport, 52 degrees at Nellis Air Force Base and 50 degrees at Henderson Executive Airport.

Temperatures in the valley were to rise today to 61 degrees by 9 a.m., to 69 degrees by noon and reach a high of 72 degrees by 3 p.m., forecasters said. The normal high for today's date is 91 degrees and the record high was 105 degrees, set in 2001.

Temperatures are expected to drop to 72 degrees by 6 p.m., to 66 degrees by 9 p.m. and to 63 degrees by midnight, forecasters said.

Tuesday's morning low will be 57 degrees and Tuesday's high will climb to 82 degrees, they said.