Cold, rainy weather swamps Southern Nevada

Robert Macy

Friday, April 30, 1999 | 12:26 p.m.

LAS VEGAS - Southern Nevadans accustomed to getting their swimming pools in shape this time of year found themselves turning up their furnaces instead on Friday.

Overnight temperatures dipped into the mid-40s after a day that set a record low for the high reading.

The weather system produced overnight rains that included an official reading of .47 of an inch at McCarran International Airport. The rains spawned flooding in low-lying areas and street intersections, and prompted the pre-dawn rescue of two men from flooded areas.

"This late in the season, it's a little unusual to have a system like this parking over Southern Nevada," said John Adair, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Thursday's high reached only 56 degrees - 26 degrees below the normal high for this time of year. It set a record for the lowest high-reading for that date.

The system was expected to move out of Southern Nevada and into Arizona later Friday, Adair said. Temperatures were expected to climb into the mid-70s on Saturday.

Clark County firefighters were called to the Flamingo Wash at Maryland Parkway at 3:30 a.m. Friday on a report of a man trapped in the flooded wash.

Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said the man was in a sleeping bag in the wash when the water began to rise. The man was able to make it to an abutment on a bridge on Maryland Parkway, where firefighters rigged a harness, lowered a captain to the stranded man, and raised him to safety.

"He was scared out of his mind," Leinbach said. "The water was rising dramatically. If he had slipped, he would have lost his life."

Leinbach said the man was hospitalized, suffering from hypothermia.

Another man was rescued from his car by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police after it became stuck in high water at the Charleston underpass.