Las Vegas betting on chance of New Year’s Eve snow

Snow covers the sides and sphinx of the Luxor Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip

If Sin City’s sports books took bets on the weather, snow in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve would normally have terrible odds. It might pay out this year, though, if the white flurries start falling on an Eiffel Tower, a pyramid and a volcano come this night as forecast by the National Weather Service.
Those huddled in New York City to watch the ball drop could expect a mostly sunny day with a low of minus 3 Celsius by evening. No chance of snow.
Forecasts in Las Vegas, though, pinned the area’s chances of New Year’s Eve snow at 70 percent, along with a 0 C low.
But even with that level of confidence, snowball fights on the Strip remain far from a sure bet.
Moisture, snow’s key ingredient, remained elusive in predictions as of late yesterday.
“Whether or not we get any snow, it’s still going to be very cold for New Year’s,” said Chris Stachelski, a meteorologist with the service in Las Vegas.
It’s part of a cold and “somewhat moist” storm moving south across California onto the Mojave Desert and Las Vegas bringing snow to parts of Northern Arizona and Utah, according to National Weather Service forecasts.
It’s going to be cold, that’s certain, so cold that the meteorologists at the National Weather Service warned tourists much to “bring layers and dress warmly,” and wear shoes with some good traction, not typical if attempting acts of fashion on the social holiday.
Some 340,000 people are expected to pack the Strip and Las Vegas’ downtown Fremont area for festivities.
Organizers of the fireworks show shot from the rooftops of seven casino resorts remained confident yesterday that snow wouldn’t damper their show. Michael Mack with Las Vegas Events said only wind could shut it down and in the 14 years the company has been producing the show, it hadn’t.
At Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport, it’s up to airlines to bring de-icing equipment with them. The airport doesn’t have any snow removal gear on hand nor is it required to. The last time any notable amount stuck to the airport’s runways was Dec. 17, 2008.
Early forecasts said the southern Nevada area could expect up to 7.5 centimeters in spots 600 meters above sea level and up to 2.5 cm on the Strip and surrounding Las Vegas valley but later meteorologists had scaled that back to up to 5 centimeters in higher elevations and “a light coating to half inch, an inch,” on the Strip, Stachelski said. AP