The news
Storm season usually winds down in the desert once the monsoon ends in late September. This year it may run longer. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says El Niño is strengthening, with “a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event” through fall and winter 2026–27. The eastern Pacific hurricane season runs through November 30, and it has already reached us once: over Labor Day weekend, moisture from the outer bands of Hurricane Marie pushed rain into the valley.
What that means for our winter is still an open question. As Dan McEvoy of the Western Regional Climate Center told The Nevada Independent, “The El Niño might be super, but the impacts aren’t guaranteed to be super.” For a building, the practical takeaway is simple: expect a few more storm windows than usual this fall, and schedule around them.
(Sources: NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Sept. 10, 2026; FOX5 Vegas, Sept. 6, 2026; The Nevada Independent, Sept. 9, 2026.)
What it means for your building
Desert rain comes down dirty. It carries dust out of the air and leaves it on the glass, so windows washed the day before a storm can look spotted again by the next morning. Exterior pressure washing has the same problem. A storefront or walkway cleaned ahead of a storm just collects the mud and debris the runoff carries in.
Inside, the damage happens at the door. Wet, gritty shoes grind that dirt into entry carpet and scratch the finish on hard floors in the first twenty feet.
The move
- Hold window cleaning and pressure washing during storm weeks. Book them for right after a system passes, not right before. If you’re on a recurring exterior schedule, ask your crew to float the date a few days around the forecast.
- Do one reset after the storm, not two. A single pass once the weather clears (glass, entries, walkways, and a look at the drains) covers what the storm left behind.
- Protect the entrances in the meantime. Extra walk-off matting and an added entry-floor pass during storm weeks cost less than restoring a scratched floor finish later.
- Move indoor projects into storm weeks. Floor strip and wax, carpet work and other interior projects don’t care about the forecast, so a wet week is a good week for them.
Planning exterior work for the fall? Commercial window cleaning and pressure washing are easy to schedule around the weather. Get in touch and we’ll help you pick dates that miss the storms.