Storm brings rain to valley

Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001 | 10:42 a.m.

A typical winter storm Monday dropped more than half of the average January rainfall on the Las Vegas Valley, caused about four times as many accidents as on a dry day and cut power to 5,000 customers.

"This is a normal winter pattern for this area -- typical winter wetness," said Barry Pierce, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service at McCarran International Airport, where 0.28 of an inch of rain fell from 2 p.m. Monday to 8 a.m. today -- 0.10 on an inch above normal.

It also was more than half of the average rainfall of 4.8 inches for January, he said.

"This system is moving out today -- we can already see a clearing to the west -- but we are looking at a pretty good system bringing more rain as early as late Wednesday or early Thursday," Pierce said.

Nevada Highway Patrol spokesman Trooper Alan Davidson said Monday night's storm "created havoc. Between 2 p.m. and 7 a.m. we had 54 accidents compared to the same 17 hours on Sunday and Monday, when we had just 12 accidents on dry roads." None of the accidents involved fatalities.

While most of the power outages throughout the valley were momentary, two large outages -- one at 10:15 p.m. in the area of Evergreen Road and Jones and Charleston boulevards and another at 3:40 a.m. in the area of Eastern Avenue, Lake Mead Boulevard and Pecos Road -- took several hours to remedy, Nevada Power said.