Red rocks temps compared to Vegas

Looking at red rocks in a week. Seeing a pretty big variation in temps forecast with some showing similar to Vegas and others showing red rocks 15 degrees cooler than the city. Curious how much cooler it is there than the city and which sites tend to better represent the conditions we will find there?

My anecdotal experience is that it is usually 5-15deg cooler in RR depending on where you go, with places of higher elevation such as Mt. Charleston being cooler, and places of lower elevation like Calico being warmer. I think the weather reports usually reflect this. If you're worried about heat, getting up pre-dawn and climbing in the shade is your best bet.

There are weather stations specifically for red rocks national conservation area such as: https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/14-days/red-rock-canyon-national-conservation-area_united-states-of-america_5511000

If the ambiguity of a weather forecast like this bothers you, you can always use wunderground to find specific weather stations near where you are interested: https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap

There is also a good website that lists weather for specific climbing areas: https://www.climbingweather.com/

Google it.  Use noaa. Use a map. Mccarran international airport is at 2181', elevation of calico basin is 3688' and is a lower point of Red Rock. Hope that helps 

wisam wrote:

Looking at red rocks in a week. Seeing a pretty big variation in temps forecast with some showing similar to Vegas and others showing red rocks 15 degrees cooler than the city. Curious how much cooler it is there than the city and which sites tend to better represent the conditions we will find there?

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-115.45277315555472&lat=36.13354815861938#.X3X9RGllAzQ

 Plan on chasing shade regardless and you'll have perfect conditions.  Staying out of the sun is the most important consideration this time of year since it's still a bit warm.

You can climb sun until noon no problem, but I'm basically a lizard at this point so don't listen to me. 

Using the McCarran airport temps as the baseline, my rule is 5-10F in most of the lower elevation in Red Rock.  20-30F for the Mt Charleston area (since most of this is at or above 7000 feet).  Shaded sections of the canyons in Red Rock can be a bit cooler, especially in the Winter and Spring.

Not Hobo Greg wrote:

If you use NOAA you can pinpoint your forecast and it will adjust for elevation.

I agree and do this all the time. Just ...

Decide what elevation interests you. Pull up a NOAA/NWS forecast, click around on the map in the area of interest until you get your preferred elevation, and save the link.

Even if it feels off when you are actually up there, you’ll have a relatively good idea of the offset when you use the link the next day. 

My experience is that it is 10-15 degrees cooler in the shade in the canyons compared to the temps in town.  Like Bryan said above, the key is staying out of the sun.  When it's 95 in town you can be perfectly comfortable, for example,  on north facing walls in Black Velvet Canyon. The sun angle feature in the routes database is very useful for knowing when your wall will hit the shade. But you have to strategize your approach times because if you're doing 1.4 miles with 800 foot gain in the sun to time your arrival so that you get to the wall just when it gets into the shade, yer gunna die.  Often I will hike in a couple hours early and then find a shady spot to relax.

Today it was close to 100 in town and we were comfortable climbing all day in the shade.

Good to know thanks!

Really depends not just on elevation but also where exactly you are.  I did a canyoneering route in Red Rock in July when it was probably 110 degrees in Las Vegas and we never even broke a sweat in 10ish hours the temperature never went above 80 in the specific canyon we were in.

Aye - sun, wind, precip ...