The season turns, and the rain comes back.

Sit today out if you can. The 2 AM zone forecast has this afternoon at 84 with south winds of 10 to 25 and relative humidity falling into single digits, and that is not a fishing day, it is a front. What matters is what is on the other side of it. Wednesday tops out at 75. Thursday 78, Friday 80, Saturday 82, then 78 Sunday and 78 on Labor Day. Not one day for the rest of this issue reaches the mid 80s. After a summer of printing 93s and 98s, that number at the top of the Wednesday column is the whole newsletter.

The nights are doing the real work. Lows in the mid 40s tonight, 42 to 48 Thursday night, 43 to 49 Friday night, upper 40s Saturday. Two months ago we were explaining that a shallow desert river cannot shed the heat it takes on when the night only falls to 60. Four consecutive nights in the 40s is the opposite of that problem. By the weekend the water you fish at seven in the morning will be genuinely cold, and it will still be cold at ten.

And there is rain in the forecast. Scattered showers Sunday afternoon and evening at 40 percent, scattered showers on Labor Day at 30 percent. We have printed fourteen consecutive dry periods, then another fourteen, and complained about it in both issues. Be honest about the scale: 40 percent scattered in the Great Basin means some of us get wet and most of us watch it fall on somebody else's mountain. It is not drought relief. But it is grey skies over the weekend, which is the single best thing that can happen to dry-fly fishing here, and it is the first wet road surface since June, which is the single worst thing that can happen to a two-track. Both of those are below.

The water came back too, and this is the good news we have been waiting three months to print. All three gauges reported this morning — the first time that has happened in a month. The South Fork tailwater, which we could not retrieve at all last week and had to describe with an eight-day-old number, reads 7.38 cfs at 2.22 feet. Against 38 years of Sep 1 records that is 80 percent of the median of 9.2 and well above the 25th percentile. All summer that reach has been scraping along under the 25th; it is now the healthiest number we have published for it, and it is up about eighteen percent on the last figure we could stand behind.

Do not let that spread to the rest of the county. The mainstem near Elko finally refreshed after two weeks stuck on an August 18 reading, and it reports 0.82 cfs — 46 percent of median, still below the 25th percentile, still a chain of connected puddles. Lamoille Creek reads 3.18 cfs, 44 percent of median, about fourteen percent above the record low for the date. One reach recovered. The valley did not.

The big fire north of Wells is out. One closure is not. The Oxley Fire, which led this newsletter last week, finished at roughly 11,000 acres and was declared fully contained on August 31. The Master Fire near Deeth is wrapped up. But the Forleen Fire — 633 acres near Forleen Butte — is quiet, not contained, and the closure it triggered is still in force: the Tabor Creek Recreation Area campground and BLM Access Road 1275 have been closed since August 25, until further notice. That is fifty-eight miles northeast of Elko, and if Tabor Creek was your Labor Day plan, make another one.

Note where that closure lives, because it is a lesson we just learned the hard way. It is BLM ground, so it will never appear on a Forest Service alerts page, and it is too small for the national fire report. Both of the sources we check every week would have told you Elko County was clear. Everything else burning in Nevada is somebody else's county — McConnell at 32,000 acres near Orovada with evacuation warnings out, Calico near the Idaho line, both Humboldt County and two hundred road miles northwest. The Hawk Fire above Reno is 98 percent contained.

One more date to circle, and it is tomorrow. The Ward Fire closure of the entire Ely Ranger District was written to expire September 1 — yesterday, as you read this. We have carried that order for four straight weeks. If it lapsed on schedule, the approaches to the Snake Range are open for Labor Day weekend, which is where we are sending you. If. Make the call before you make the drive; the number is in the hot spot.

• RegTwo closures and a licence. The Ward Fire closure of the entire Ely Ranger District (Order 04-17-26-09-02) was written to expire September 1 — yesterday. We have not confirmed it lifted, and orders get extended: call 775-289-3031 before you drive. Tabor Creek campground and BLM Road 1275 remain closed over the Forleen Fire, until further notice. FSR 57390 is still closed with a 300-foot buffer through October 31.
  
  Fishing Great Basin National Park needs a Nevada licence — the park does not issue its own or exempt you. Bonneville cutthroat there and bull trout in the Jarbidge go straight back. Everything else is on the regulations page.
• CareThe hazards flipped this week. Fire drops down the list — Oxley is contained and nothing is burning on our districts — but fire danger is still rated High forest-wide and Stage 1 restrictions run through October 31. Campfires in developed sites only.
  
  What replaces it is rain and cold. The first rain on a Great Basin dirt road after three dry months is the slickest surface in the state: a clay two-track that was four-wheel-drive-optional Saturday is a winch problem Sunday afternoon. Drive in twenty miles and you watch the sky behind you, not just ahead. Above treeline, watch the build and come down early.
  
  Then the water. Four nights in the 40s means it is genuinely cold now — dress for immersion, not for the afternoon, and wade with a staff on the tailwater, where the extra cfs has more push than you are used to.
• TipFish the bad weather. Everything we have taught you this summer — first light, off by nine, chase shade — was a workaround for heat and glare, and this week you can put all of it down.
  
  The best window of the next seven days is probably Sunday afternoon under a grey sky with showers moving through, which is exactly when most people cancel. Low light pulls fish out of cover; cloud and falling pressure are what a Blue-Winged Olive hatch waits for; and a rain-dimpled surface hides a leader better than flat calm ever did.
  
  So: put the #18 and #20 BWOs in the box now, take rain gear you can actually cast in, and fish the middle of the day for the first time since June.