How much snow falls in Reno, Carson City and at Lake Tahoe?

The valley stations

These are 30-year averages from named National Weather Service cooperative stations, not forecasts. The Reno WFO station (elevation 4,987 feet) shows 29.7 inches of snow a year. The Carson City station (4,761 feet) shows 14.0 inches, and the Minden station (4,709 feet) shows 21.8 inches. Fallon, lower and drier, shows 4.5 inches.

The spread inside one valley is large. A west Reno or west Carson City street at higher elevation sees more than the airport or the valley floor, and any single year can be well above or below the average.

The lake

No station on the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe has a published snowfall normal in the data we used. Glenbrook (6,350 feet) lists about 18.5 inches of precipitation a year but no snowfall figure, and Incline Village (6,356 feet) lists none either. Treat the Tahoe City figure of 179.0 inches (6,230 feet) as an across-the-lake reference, not a Nevada measurement.

That gap in the record is why we say snow loads at lake elevations are heavy and leave it there. Older figures differ from the 1991-2020 normals.

What it means for trees and driveways

More snow means more weight on branches. Heavy wet snow breaks limbs on conifers and on brittle deciduous trees, and our guide on heavy wet snow and broken limbs covers the morning after.

For plowing, snow depth matters less than timing: a few inches that freeze can be as hard on a lot as a foot. We plow, haul, shovel and salt, and our team is available around the clock through snow season. Ask whether your address is on the route: call 775.232.8243. See climate normals by station for more.