Rain has arrived but the drought remains

Friday, Sept. 6, 2002 | 9:28 a.m.

While showers brought welcome relief to Southern Nevada residents, parched after a summer with only a single day of thunderstorms, the brief respite has not made a dent in the drought, officials said.

Thunderstorms and showers are expected to continue over Southern Nevada today and through Saturday, National Weather Service meteorologist John Adair said. Today's high was expected to reach 90 degrees, 14 degrees lower than Wednesday's high temp of 104 degrees. The high was 92 degrees on Thursday.

A plume of moisture from tropical depression Hernan continued to stream across Southern Nevada overnight, bringing the promise of showers and winds to the valley.

Thursday's thunderstorms created dry lightning and sent a 44-year-old Las Vegas man to the hospital when a lightning bolt struck a tree about 10 feet away from where he was standing near a home in the 2000 block of Gray Eagle Way, Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said. The man was treated and released after he reported his hands tingled.

Merle Berman, a neighbor on the street, said she heard the sharp crack of thunder while sitting inside her home reading papers.

"It was loud and my dogs jumped," Berman said.

Federal agencies and weather forecasters said Thursday that extreme dry conditions could persist over much of the West, including Southern Nevada, through the winter months.

The Climate Prediction Center in Maryland issued a forecast for continued drought through at least the fall. The center does forecasts up to three months at a time.

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys said that 2002 is the third consecutive year of below-average runoff in the Colorado River, which supplies seven Western states with water, including Nevada.

The drought is affecting half the nation, from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, Keys said. Southern Nevada is in extreme drought, he said.

Lake Mead is expected to drop to 1,151 feet by January, which would be a 26-foot loss in 2002 alone, Keys said.

Yet cities, ranchers, farmers and industry will receive the water they need from the Colorado, Keys said, because reservoirs such as Lake Mead had enough water in storage.

Lake Mead had dropped to a level of 1,156.5 feet on Tuesday, Karla Norris, spokeswoman for the National Park Service, said.

Park Service rangers are encouraging people not to park at the side of roadways or in no-parking zones because several vehicles have become stuck in silt or sand, Norris said. As sudden storms popped across the valley, lake visitors were warned not to camp in dry washes leading to the lake.

August went without a drop of rain officially recorded, making it the sixth driest August in Southern Nevada's weather history, along with 1944, 1956, 1976, 1980 and 1985.