Minden, Nevada

Use of sundown siren and sundown town status

Minden sounded a "sundown siren" at 6pm almost every evening from 1917 until 2023, originally signifying that members of the Washoe Indian tribe were required to leave town by 6:30pm or face jail or fine.^[9][10] Douglas County fully repealed its sundown ordinance in the mid-1970s.

In 2021, the State of Nevada passed a law that prohibits communities from sounding signals associated with a past law "which required persons of a particular race, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin or color to leave the town by a certain time." Minden Town Manager J. D. Frisbee claimed the law doesn't apply to them stating, “There’s a (Minden) ordinance in place right now that says that the siren sounds every day in commemoration of our first responders. … It never went off at 6:30, when the county had an ordinance to get Native Americans out of town.”^{[11][12][13][14]}

After another Nevada law targeting sundown sirens, S.B. 391, was passed in 2023, Minden finally silenced the siren.^[10] Marty Meeden, a retired elementary school teacher of Washoe descent, expressed relief, saying, "Did you hear about the partially deaf senior woman who was verbalized for being in town after sunset? Did you hear about the routine picking up of our young men who were beaten and then left out in the fields?... This is the history we as children learned in regards to the siren."^[10]

Climate

Minden has a cool semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk) with huge diurnal temperature variations during all seasons. Summers are hot to very hot during the day, with 68.5 afternoons topping 90 °F (32.2 °C) and 5.7 afternoons getting over 100 °F (37.8 °C); however, mornings even in summer are very cool to cold and between June and August. On average, 1.2 mornings will fall under freezing. Rainfall is very rare during the summer as the monsoon practically never reaches this far north: in July more than four years in ten record no measurable precipitation and only one in twenty expects 1 inch or 25.4 millimetres. Winter afternoons are cool and frequently sunny, but mornings are freezing to frigid. Temperatures of 0 °F (−17.8 °C) or below can be expected on two mornings each winter, although all but 4.7 afternoons each year can be expected to top freezing, whilst during the three winter months 45.9 afternoons will typically top 50 °F (10.0 °C). The hottest temperature on record is 109 °F (42.8 °C) on July 6, 2007 and the coldest is −24 °F (−31.1 °C), which occurred on January 21, 1916, January 26, 1949 and February 7, 1989. The coldest afternoon was on January 9, 1937 when the temperature did not top 4 °F (−15.6 °C) and the hottest minimum 67 °F (19.4 °C) on August 28 and 29, 1906, June 25, 1927 and August 20, 1931.

The majority of precipitation occurs from winter Pacific storm systems, although the Sierra Nevada rain shadow limits the precipitation they produce in Nevada. The wettest “rain year” has been from July 1937 to June 1938 with 17.18 inches (436.4 mm) and the driest from July 1959 to June 1960 with 3.31 inches (84.1 mm). The wettest day on record has been December 30, 2002 with 3.90 inches or 99.1 millimetres. With at least 7.90 inches or 200.7 millimetres, January 1909 was the wettest single month on record. Winter afternoons are warm enough in Minden that most precipitation occurs as rain, although the mean snowfall is 21.8 inches or 0.55 metres. The cold, wet month of January 1916, however, saw as much as 52.0 inches (1.32 m) of snow and the season from July 1908 to June 1909, 70 inches (1.78 m); however, no measurable snow fell between July 1962 and June 1963.^[15]