Current Weather
in Lee Vining, California

Click here for special weather features for members only

WEATHER STATION STATISTICS

The Committee's weather station is located at 6,800 feet above sea level in Lee Vining, California. Highs and lows are reset daily at 12:06 a.m. Lee Vining overlooks Mono Lake, one of the oldest, most ecologically productive lakes in North America. It sits at the base of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at 37° 57' 23.148" North Latitude, 119° 07' 10.092" West Longitude, in the Pacific Time Zone. The annual precipitation is about 14 inches, and most of that falls as snow during the winter. Generally, we are in a sagebrush-filled high desert next to a pinyon-juniper woodland on the flanks of the mountains. A nearby riparian corridor shades the perennial Lee Vining Creek as it exits the mouth of Lee Vining Canyon, about a mile to the south. The prevailing winds are from the southwest.

HOW IT WORKS

People are always asking us about the weather, so we thought we'd make it easier to find out the current conditions at Mono Lake. The weather data is updated every ten minutes, 24 hours a day.

Where does the weather information come from? Data is gathered at the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore by a Davis Instruments Weather Monitor II system and prepared for the Web with Virtual Weather Station software. Here's a rundown of the important sensors:

First, we have an anemometer mounted about five feet above the roofline of the Mono Lake Committee building in Lee Vining to measure wind speed and direction.

Second, we have a temperature/humidity sensor mounted in a radiation shielded housing next to the official NOAA temperature sensor.

Third, the Davis base unit has an internal barometer which has been calibrated to sea level pressure.

Fourth, we have a precipitation gauge at ground level next to a National Weather Service Cooperative Observer precipitation gauge. Since most of our precipitation occurs in the winter, we need to be able to melt snow as it falls with a heater (purchased with donations from generous member Tom Melatis and hydrologist Peter Vorster).

All data is stored in a data logger module in the Davis base unit.

Since late July 1998 we have been using the free Virtual Weather Station software to prepare the data for this Web page. Graphs and displays are created a jpg files, then every ten minutes Weather Web sends out the files to our web server. The current weather icon to the right may not always be correct (it is based on METAR data from Mammoth Lakes), so check the Webcams for the current conditions.