Lost Cabin firefighters benefit from rainfall

Thursday, July 18, 2002 | 9:54 a.m.

Intense, isolated thunderstorms rolled through the Las Vegas Valley Wednesday afternoon, breaking a 113-day dry spell and giving crews battling the Lost Cabin Fire in the Spring Mountains a much-needed break.

The storms left a little more than half an inch of rain on the record books, but rainfall in the area was still about 2 inches below average for this time of year, Ron McQueen, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said.

"It was a nice welcome shot of rain, everything benefited from it," he said. "But it terms of breaking the dry spell, we still have a deficit."

Firefighters battling the Lovell Canyon fire saw only an estimated six one-hundredths of an inch, but it was enough to help, McQueen said.

They should get more of the rain they need today and Friday, as isolated thunderstorms are expected to drop about a quarter of an inch on mountains surrounding Las Vegas, McQueen said.

The valley should received significantly less, he said, but he could not provide an estimate.

"We're not expecting what we had yesterday in the valley," McQueen said.

Some street flooding was reported behind the Imperial Palace Hotel and on streets on the western side of Las Vegas, around Decatur Boulevard.

The 0.52 inches of rain recorded at McCarran International Airport broke a 113-day dry spell, National Weather Service meteorologist John Adair said.

Officials from the University of Nevada's master gardening program said the rain was too sporadic to help lawns in the Las Vegas Valley, which have been parched due to high nighttime temperatures.

What helped the vegetation more was higher humidity and lower temperatures. By allowing the roots to cool, they lowered the amount of irrigation needed, a master gardener said.

Unofficial totals from Clark County Regional Flood Control District monitors showed 1.46 inches southwest of Searchlight, about 60 miles south of Las Vegas, Adair said. Jean southwest of Las Vegas got 0.71 inches, he said.

The high temperature was a comfortable 97 degrees.

About 2:50 p.m. about 900 Nevada Power customers reported an outage in the Spanish Oaks area near West Sahara Avenue, Nevada Power spokeswoman Sonya Headen said. The outage lasted 20 minutes.

"Maybe it's a warning of things to come," Headen said.