Valley gets first tiny taste of this year’s flash floods

Mary Manning and Ed Koch

Thursday, July 24, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.

A futile search for a man reported floating in a desert wash filled with rushing water Wednesday afternoon gave Las Vegas its first taste this year of the dangers of flash floods.

Ironically it came in the fourth year of a drought, a dry spell that meteorologists say won't be quenched by rain that may fall through the rest of what is called the monsoon season -- usually a rainy season in Southern Nevada that lasts from July through mid-September. National Weather Service forecasters expect no relief from the drought until at least March.

The official rainfall at McCarran International Airport was zero Wednesday, but that didn't stop rain in the Spring Mountains from creating flooding conditions in the western part of the valley.

In Wednesday's incident, a woman living near Desert Inn Road and the Las Vegas Beltway called 911 and said she saw a homeless man who lives in the normally dry wash floating and waving his arms in running water, Clark County Fire Department Capt. Larry Betzel said.

The county's heavy rescue crew, 19 fire trucks, paramedics, ambulances and Metro Police gathered near a flood culvert northeast of Las Vegas Beltway and Durango Drive as two helicopters flew over a four-mile stretch of the concrete flood control channel, but did not find the man.

Betzel called off the search-and-rescue effort about 4 p.m. The heavy rescue crew members never got wet.

"I'm speculating (the man) may have gotten out," Betzel said. "If he would have washed through, we would have seen him,"

The water in the channel ran about five inches high before rising to more than a foot as the runoff from storms in the western mountains surged through it.

While six inches of running water can knock an adult down, the channel's waters were flowing slowly enough that the man could have escaped at one of the sharp turns on its way to the control basin, Betzel said.

People who enter the flood channels are risking their lives, Betzel said. Not only is there a threat of rushing water, but mudslides and rockslides can occur during a flash flood.

The flooding was caused partly by a half-inch of rain that fell in 20 minutes in the steep red sandstone canyons of the Red Rock National Conservation Area.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning about 3 p.m. for the Red Rock area, meteorologist Steve Downs said.

Most of the urban Las Vegas area was not affected by flooding, Downs said.

Wednesday's storms also caused a handful of lightning strikes, enough to set some dry brush in Red Rock Canyon and the Spring Mountains on fire.

BLM Fire Capt. Henry Ramirez, a 13-year veteran of fighting wildland fires in Southern Nevada, was mopping up a brush fire that burned an area about 20 feet by 10 feet on top of a mountain along the Red Rock scenic loop.

Ramirez, with five other crew members, planned to watch the hot spot into the night, he said.

Lightning striking the tinder-dry grass in the surrounding mountains can smolder for days and suddenly ignite a major wildland fire, Ramirez said.

"In this case, it's contained and it's out," he said. "We haven't had much fire activity, but we are ready and expecting it."

BLM firefighter Peter Berni said about six lightning strikes were reported in the mountains and Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management firefighters had responded to each one.

Weather forecasters expect more hot temperatures with little recorded rainfall.

"It's not good news at all -- above normal temperatures and below level precipitation through the end of the year," said Charlie Schlott, meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas.

Normal conditions aren't expected to return until January, when forecasters are predicting a dry, mild winter, he said.

"Nothing spectacular," Schlott said. "We'll remain in the drought because it looks like we won't get too much help from Mother Nature."

The short term forecast through the weekend calls for daily highs above 100 degrees with the chance of afternoon thundershowers. The expected high today is 108 degrees -- but probably no more dangerous conditions, the weather service says.

To date Southern Nevada has had 3.03 inches of rain, which is 0.41 of an inch above normal for the year. Last year at this time Las Vegas was 0.62 above normal, according to weather service statistics.

For July, there has been just 0.17 of an inch of rain, 0.11 of an inch below normal.

That doesn't approach the record, however. The driest Julys on record were in 1948, 1963, 1981 and 1993, when zero rainfall was recorded.