This summer has delivered heat wave after heat wave for much of the nation, but on Saturday it got contrarian and delivered a trace amount of snow to California mountains.
Snow was measured in small amounts in and around Lake Tahoe on Saturday, with National Weather Service precipitation data showing accumulations of 0.15 inches north of Stanislaus National Forest to 0.03 inches north in the Tahoe National Forest.
It's unlikely to stick around, but it provided for a day of winter wonderland scenery in a country cooked by relentless heat.
The day in the Sierra Nevada Mountains started out rainy as wet roads were blamed for a vehicle collision on Interstate 80 that prompted the temporary closure of westbound lanes, according to the California Department of Transportation. The interstate runs through the Tahoe National Forest en route to the San Francisco Bay Area.
About 140 miles to the north, the annual Burning Man festival faced a second year of weather serious enough to prompt organizers to close the event's main gate Saturday morning to those arriving by vehicle ahead of Sunday's first day of festivities. Attendees were urged to delay their arrivals so as not to clog up roadways leading to the venue in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, though the gate was opened later Saturday afternoon.
Later in the day, the Palisades Tahoe snow resort in the town of Olympic Valley was the site of falling snow, an August rarity captured on multiple cellphone videos.
California Highway Patrol video of Interstate 80 at Donner Summit in Soda Springs showed snow falling in what the agency described as "small flurries." "Too soon?" the CHP asked on Facebook.
The National Weather Service office in Reno, Nevada, said a winter-like cold front moved in from the Pacific and would continue to bring rain overnight until moving out of the area in its march east.
"It's pretty rare," said federal meteorologist Amanda Young. "It will bring temperatures down and do a light dusting."
Sunday morning temperatures were likely to be in the low 30s, prompting the service to issue warnings about a potential "hard freeze," which could destroy seasonal vegetation and create patches of ice on roadways. Temperatures were expected to be 15 to 20 degrees below normal, the weather service said.
A frost advisory was in effect for areas east of Reno in Nevada.
The rare, late-summer snow made for dazzling imagery, but it also served as a point of contrast for parts of the country that continue to bake in the season's dogged heat waves.
While a weather station near Walker, California, in the mountains about 85 miles south of Lake Tahoe, measured the day's lowest low temperature at 29 degrees, Medicine Lodge, Kansas, posted its highest in the contiguous United States at 115 degrees, according to the weather service.
Lubbock, Texas, posted 104 degrees, the fourth day in a row that that city set a record high for the respective dates.
A heat wave described by the weather service as "relentless" was expected to move to the northeast from its base over Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, bringing with it triple-digit high temperatures to parts of the Midwest.
Heat alerts are in effect for 23 million people from parts of New Mexico to parts of Minnesota, with that heat wave-producing high pressure system boosting temperatures to 10 degrees and more above normal this weekend, according to NBC forecasters.
But by Monday the same low pressure system that brought a little snow to California’s mountains will push that heat wave out and bring some relief to the nation’s midsection, federal forecasters said.
