Heavy snow and winter storm events by county since 1996

Snow load is one of the two big winter stresses on Northern Nevada trees, with wind. This table counts heavy snow, winter storm and blizzard events logged for the seven counties we work in, from the Weather Service's Storm Events Database, 1996 through 2025. It describes how often warnings-level snow was reported, not how many inches fell on any street.

What the dataset is

The Storm Events Database is NOAA's catalogue of reports from National Weather Service offices. Heavy snow, winter storm and blizzard events are logged by forecast zone, and a zone is credited to every county it touches, so the counts overlap between counties. One storm crossing two zones counts twice for a county that lies in both. Do not add the rows together.

Carson City and Douglas County show identical numbers, 462 heavy snow events, 33 winter storms and 1 blizzard, because they share the same zones.

What stands out

The pattern follows the Sierra front, with the biggest counts where the mountains are closest.

• Heavy snow events: Washoe 492, Carson City and Douglas 462 each, Lyon 249, Storey 191, Mineral 32 and Churchill 26.
• Winter storm events: Washoe 36, Carson City and Douglas 33, Lyon 24, Storey 16, Mineral 5 and Churchill 3. Only Washoe, Carson City and Douglas have a blizzard, one each.
• The last ten years, 2016 to 2025, hold 233 heavy snow and winter storm events for Washoe County and 221 for Carson City and Douglas, about 44% of Washoe's thirty-year total of 528.
• 2018 is the outlier year in the file, with 58 heavy snow reports for Washoe, and 2023 is next with 41. The quietest stretch is 2012 to 2014, with 5, 4 and 3.
• Lyon County also peaked in 2018, with 41 reports, against 18 or fewer in every other year.

What it means for trees

Heavy, wet snow is what breaks limbs. It piles on a crown that still holds leaves, or on evergreen branches, and the weight lands on forks, narrow unions and old pruning wounds. Our heavy snow and broken limbs guide and the snow-load breakage page explain what to look for. Do not shake or climb a loaded tree; leave that to a crew.

Battle Born handles storm damage and emergency tree work around the clock, and snow and ice removal in snow season. If anyone is hurt, call 911; if a line is down, stay clear and call NV Energy first.

Limits of the data

These are counts of reports, not inches. A single event can mean a few inches in a valley or several feet at Tahoe elevations, and the Weather Service changed what it logged over the years. For depth, use the NOAA snowfall normals by station on our climate normals page.

The table does not break out the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe from the rest of Washoe and Douglas counties.