The Afternoon Zephyr

Sometimes a breeze can blow easy or bring Hell or High Water.

July 25th daily weather prediction from the Record-Courier, Minden, NV: "Today’s forecast calls for sunny skies and a high near 92 degrees. The Zephyr will bring 15-20 mph west winds just before lunch time with 30 mph gusts this afternoon."

Recently, my daughter and I sat in the lawn swing, watching her son throw dirt into the air with his sand shovel. He seemed enchanted as the heavy granules fell to earth immediately while wisps of silt floated slowly through the air. As he performed this little experiment, a familiar sound buzzed overhead: a tow plane pulling a glider into position over a desert thermal.

Both of these activities are supported by what locals of Carson Valley loving refer to as the Afternoon Zephyr. Each day at approximately 2 p.m., the Zephyr arrives with breezes ranging from five to forty-five miles per hour. We could get a joyous cool down or an EF1 tornado. It is so predictable in its direction, every three-sided horse shelter in the valley opens on the eastern side. Lenticular clouds  stack up like pancakes, creating strange disc-shaped formations that have been mistaken for UFOs.

   Photo from Wikipedia

While the grandson has taken his science experiments home, the tow plane has ramped up to several flights a day over our house, taking glider pilots over the Pine Nut mountains to circle endlessly in cobalt skies. Mornings are calm, but by noon, the currents can get a bit bumpy. Our Zephyr sucks hot air upward, boosting those gliders ever higher, and whatever moisture exists in the cow pastures condenses into towering thunderheads. If those thunderheads don't provide enough of a thrill to glider pilots, they can soar along the Carson Range searching for the updraft of The Wave. That's when things get really exciting.

The wind current the forms The Wave slides up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada until it reaches the crest. Because the eastern slope is so steep, the drops over that abrupt edge, dumping whatever rain or snow it gathered along the bottom of the mountains. A lot of times, though, the currents are dry and form an undulating wave pattern that snakes down the hill. This can hurl a plane or glider high for greater altitude or slam it downward into the mountainside. Years ago, veteran pilot Steve Fossett hit The Wave with tragic results.

As temperatures increase in July, monsoon clouds develop over the entire Great Basin. These thunderheads can supply an overabundance of drama by zapping the arid sagebrush sea with lightning. Most of our wildfires start with these fiery bursts. Occasionally, lightning kills directly, as happened a few years ago when a lightning bolt struck the earth between a pair of mustangs, killing them both. Because wild horses grazed that area, however, the bolt left only a blackened mark on the soil instead of becoming a major fire.

If a storm cell dumps its load of rain on the parched hardpan, emergency supervisors get antsy. Which neighborhood will get flooded? One neighborhood receive a 100-year storm yet leave the adjacent neighborhood dry as toast. Burn scars from previous wildfires provide easy channels for flashfloods, sometimes behaving as sheet flow.

I witnessed one of these floods only a mile from my home. The water moves so quickly, it can't seep into the ground; thus it flows as a sheet of water, sometimes a foot deep. What's weird about the scenario is that floods and wildfires can occur at the same time.

My daughter and I were hanging out streaming movies when her phone rang out a warning about a wildfire seven miles from our house. It was headed our way. Indeed, smoke was building up just outside our patio slider. Moments later, our neighbor pounded on our door. Her four-by-four vibrated with the motor running as she announced the wash was running. "Want to come see it? It's really raging!"

Ummm… was she aware of the fire?

We piled into her ATV and drove to the other end of the block, amazed to see muddy water churning down the wash that crosses our street. We drive over it every day without so much as a thought. Now it roiled like a cataract on the Colorado River.

Returning home, we noticed the smoke from the wildfire billowed a few miles away, but the Zephyr blew it away from our neighborhood. Local firefighters contained it within an hour. The floodwaters receded, draining down the channel toward a retention pond. All was right with the world, so we returned to our movie.

Modern-day flood control works are a big thing in Carson Valley, but Basque shepherds carved ponds where they herded their sheep in the Pine Nuts a hundred years ago. These ponds still exist, providing water for wildlife and domestic grazers alike to this day. The Fish Spring wild horses depend on these ponds throughout the summer and are kept filled by thunderstorms as well as PNWHA volunteers with water trucks.

Pine Nut Wild Horse Advocates Facebook page.

Playas are common throughout the state and I've enjoyed watching dust devils dance their serpentine ballet across those briny sands, sometimes three or four at a time. I didn't think they did much damage until I got caught in one. Standing in my backyard, I watched with growing anxiety as a microburst formed at the bottom of the hill where I live. As it blew toward me, it picked up lawn chairs, garden woodchips and plants, and other debris. I ducked beneath shelter just as the dust devil careened through my yard and dissipated as soon as it hit our brick wall.

That was a rare occasion as the Zephyr hasn't thrown one of those at me since. One day, however, I watched what I wager was an EF1 tornado towering over Misfit Flats about a mile from my daughter's house. It crept ever so slowly toward the houses along the playa's edge, but never reached them, even though it lasted about ten minutes. My daughter told me it isn't officially a tornado unless it destroys something. Right! It's just a more rural version of our Afternoon Zephyr. (I wish my video of this tornado had worked out. It would’ve been spectacular.)

When a good steady wind picks up tons of sand, swirling it hundreds of feet into the sky does it breakup into ribbons once it hits the sage? Maybe the tumbleweeds stop these things. I've seen tumbleweeds the size and density of my Subaru rolling across Highway 50 in a suicidal game of "Whack a Weed or Smack a Semi." The biggest and densest rolled along the side of the road, avoiding the highway. It gave me daymares thinking about what it could've done to me and my car. Like the Hell and High Water scenario we experiences with our neighbor, I literally dodged disaster, or I should say it dodged me. Maybe there really is a God?

Carson Valley's weather loves to tease. Anything can happen. Weather can either surprise us with its temper tantrums or comfort us with a soothing breeze on a summer afternoon. Wild at times, it can turn a quiet day into a tempest. Then again, when the Afternoon Zephyr doesn't arrive as usual, the oppression of a humid monsoon can bear down like an anvil. It's harder to breathe and the swamp coolers don't work. On those days, I'll take whatever chaos the Zephyr brings. And sometimes, it brings awesome rainbows.

photos by Sue Cauhape unless otherwise indicated

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