diff --git a/bin/spack b/bin/spack
index e92d7cc273f5f5bd25006ce7deace533c8bef7ff..b4f715ab60f3538cfe48c1782ee024b0ca04ba61 100755
--- a/bin/spack
+++ b/bin/spack
@@ -41,6 +41,14 @@ sys.path.insert(0, SPACK_LIB_PATH)
 SPACK_EXTERNAL_LIBS = os.path.join(SPACK_LIB_PATH, "external")
 sys.path.insert(0, SPACK_EXTERNAL_LIBS)
 
+import warnings
+# Avoid warnings when nose is installed with the python exe being used to run 
+# spack. Note this must be done after Spack's external libs directory is added 
+# to sys.path. 
+with warnings.catch_warnings():
+    warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
+    import nose
+
 # Quick and dirty check to clean orphaned .pyc files left over from
 # previous revisions.  These files were present in earlier versions of
 # Spack, were removed, but shadow system modules that Spack still