Communicating Wind Impacts from Atmospheric Rivers across the Eastern Sierra and Western Nevada

Winter storms fueled by Atmospheric Rivers are often thought as events that can produce significant amounts of precipitation. However, high winds preceding the precipitation are just as hazardous to a wide variety of communities. In the lee of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, wind speeds and turbulence are enhanced ahead of atmospheric river events due to mountain waves, gap flows, and down-slope effects. These winds often impact air and ground transportation, recreation, damage public utilities, and drive extreme rates of wildfire spread.

Over the past few winters NWS Reno has been developing and evaluating tools to assist forecasters in messaging context of high wind threats to end users. Our messaging goal is to provide a readily digestible amount of information on top of the NWS deterministic forecasts - focusing on the high end or worst case scenarios. These scenarios provide useful guidance to agencies for planning staffing levels, emergency response and adjusting schedules for community events and travel.

This presentation will cover a unique situation where an atmospheric river storm produced strong winds that sparked a two wildfires followed by a period of heavy rain leading to debris flows from the burn scars in a short time frame. The presentation will also discuss our messaging style of keeping it real and the use of commonplace phrases to help raise awareness.