It's wet in Red Rock(s)

Odds on it raining on Sunday? EVERYTHING SAYS DIFFERENT THINGS UGH :( 

50/50. It will or it won’t. You’ll wake up and go look on Sunday like the rest of us. Canyons= more risk. Calico Basin = less risk. Have a backup plan. 
Thursday weather forecasts for the weekend in Vegas are worth about the same as my new roulette system.

Just got rained out in the canyons after doing one pitch and it was raining pretty hard as we were heading out.  Checked the forecast many times and only wind was expected, but a big storm system came through today.  Tomorrow is definitely a no go and expect a LOT of threads to be popping up about people asking for bail gear back.  There were around 6 parties on the Angel food wall that we saw and I cannot imagine how many people were on the classics in Pine Creek and Juniper where it was pouring as we drove out.

Bryan Kwrote:

Just got rained out in the canyons after doing one pitch and it was raining pretty hard as we were heading out.  Checked the forecast many times and only wind was expected, but a big storm system came through today.  Tomorrow is definitely a no go and expect a LOT of threads to be popping up about people asking for gear back.  There ware around 6 parties on the Angel food wall that we saw and I cannot imagine how many people were on the classics in Pine Creek and Juniper where it was pouring as we drove out.

I find the windy app to be incredibly accurate and highly recommend it. Especially the ECMWF 9km model. It saw the rain for today all the way back on Tuesday (i remember because I made a 90 foot whip bet). From my use for the last 200 days, it has been incredibly consistent in detecting incoming rain. Sometimes it will get too excited and over shoot the accumulation by a lot, but for red rocks the main thing for forecast that matters isn't really about “how much” but “if.” Once you know it’s rained, then you can figure out how much and how long to wait.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

I find the windy app to be incredibly accurate and highly recommend it. Especially the ECMWF 9km model. It saw the rain for today all the way back on Tuesday (i remember because I made a 90 foot whip bet). From my use for the last 200 days, it has been incredibly consistent in detecting incoming rain. Sometimes it will get too excited and over shoot the accumulation by a lot, but for red rocks the main thing for forecast that matters isn't really about “how much” but “if.” Once you know it’s rained, then you can figure out how much and how long to wait.

Cool that your app works that well for seeing rain coming in.  I might have to download it.  My friend and I use NOAA which I've always had good results with and neither of us saw any chance of rain forecasted for today and I always use the spot selector so I can check forecasts for the canyons.

Bryan Kwrote:

Cool that your app works that well for seeing rain coming in.  I might have to download it.  My friend and I use NOAA which I've always had good results with and neither of us saw any chance of rain forecasted for today and I always use the spot selector so I can check forecasts for the canyons.

If you look a few comments back in this thread for last sunday, it saw precipitation that no other forecast i know saw. Wetrockpolice and NOAA both failed to record that little drizzle even happened. Windy is definitely king. So glad a buddy of mine told me about it

Wet in, at the minimum, Juniper canyon. We topped out myster Z as the rain/hail began, maybe 1300?.  Driving out, calico area looked toasty dry. 

I just got off riding hood wall a bit before 3pm and a bit of rain blew over the hills. It was enough to create a layer of water over some of the rocks and it noticably soaked into the wall. I know very little about how much water is too much, but I certainly feel like it was too much to climb on the basin side today and possibly tomorrow.

Edit: also, just for the rocord, NOAA said it was going to rain in the afternoon when we checked the weather this morning 

Definitely got soaked today also in the canyons. Fortunately we topped out as it began and only rappelled and hiked out while getting rained and hailed on.

In other good news the 60mph forecast felt like 30mph max on our North East facing route. 

Alright. I feel as though I should weigh in here as I have all of a sudden become subject to the wrath of Mountain Project. We trekked up to the Eagle Wall the day in question as a scouting mission for the approach, as we knew it would be involved. Apon arrival we did a lot of sand checks and noticed that everything appeared as though it was dry( I believe it had been something like 36 hours since last rainfall), and we did Lev.
Talking to some people afterwards we did indeed learn to respect the local ethics better, and have no intention of climbing in similar locations so close to the time of rainfall again.

Now, for the day that we climbed in Calico: There were at least 15 parties at the gallery( at this point it was probably 50-60-ish hours after rain), and more spread out through the other crags in the area.

One more thing, I never mentioned “being used to climbing in bad conditions” to the shop employees. Wet rock sucks!

Ps: Black Velvet also got hit hard with rain today

Elaine Gilstromwrote:

I just got off riding hood wall a bit before 3pm and a bit of rain blew over the hills. It was enough to create a layer of water over some of the rocks and it noticably soaked into the wall. I know very little about how much water is too much, but I certainly feel like it was too much to climb on the basin side today and possibly tomorrow.

Edit: also, just for the rocord, NOAA said it was going to rain in the afternoon when we checked the weather this morning 

Interesting to note that both NOAA and wetrockpolice haven’t registered that it has rained at all.

The sandstone here is real fragile, I wouldn’t climb on it tomorrow, and would give it at least 24 hours. But also Windy is pretty confident it’s gonna rain tomorrow as well. Has yet to be wrong for me once it says it’s gonna rain one day out, especially when several forecasts are agreeing. Probably gonna be the same deal like today, a little drizzle, but as far as I can tell, that’s enough to call it off.

Seeing other parties climbing is not an endorsement of "ethical" conditions.

Moving on, thanks all for the observations. Its really helpful for us as we get soooo many calls about conditions.

Agreed, thank you all for the weather observations! Keep posting them please.

We hiked out to Juniper this morning expecting lots of wind, and got to the base of MysterZ as it started sprinkling very lightly. We waited to see which direction the weather would go, but by 11:00 it was actually raining. We ditched our packs to go for a hike since yesterday was my partner’s first day at Red Rock, and he was just stoked to see more of it! We hiked up to the slabs between Jackrabbit Buttress and Brownstone Wall and there were small streams and waterfalls coming down them! We got hailed on a bit as well. It was a solid three and a half hours of steady rain.

We then drove around the loop road and scrambled around a bit and saw puddles at Calico, and obviously wet dirt/sand. Did it rain there, too? What about Kraft? We couldn’t tell from Juniper Canyon.

I think it’s time to move the personal roastings to a different thread. This thread is most helpful as a conditions reporting mechanism.

It’s all just information. What is done with that information (or what is ignored) is completely out of your control. (Yes, it’s immensely frustrating.)

Kraft this morning. Looks wet in the pic but can't tell if feels damp or just cold. 

Rain is now hitting us here at Desert Rock Sports. Looks like all of Red Rock may be getting hit from my perspective here.

Edit: some reports from people returning from Kraft that it was sleeting on them.

I’m with a group driving up today, but we haven’t climbed in Red Rocks before. Assuming it stays dry after today, when would folks suggest it would be advisable to climb on say Solar Slab?

From my view on Sahara just a bit ago it looks like the rain is mainly isolated north of Mount Wilson but that could change as the storm develops more

I also heard just now that it looked like it avoided Wilson from some who were out scouting approach to Inti Watana. IDK.