Wednesday, July 28, 2004 | 10:49 a.m.
Heavy winds kicked up clouds of dust along with smoke from the Mount Charleston fire, sweeping it through Las Vegas Tuesday night, enveloping the Strip and reducing visibility at local airports and on roads throughout the city.
The winds knocked out electricity to more than 3,000 Nevada Power customers. Also traffic lights were out, contributing to a hit-and-run serious injury accident at East St. Louis Avenue and Fremont Street, where a vehicle went through the intersection and collided with another car, officials said.
Between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Tuesday, wind gusts reached nearly 50 mph, causing dust pollution to reach the moderate zone for that three-hour period. However, the dust storm did not cause the overall health classification for the 24-hour period to drop below the good range, said Clark County Department of Air Quality Management meteorologist Phillip Wiker.
"It was good for air quality because the winds cleaned us out," Wiker said.
He noted that in the northwest valley the spike of moderate conditions were caused by a combination of dust and smoke from the Mount Charleston fire that began Monday and that moderate readings in other parts of the valley were from dust alone.
Wiker said that while air quality conditions are expected to remain in the good range for today's 24-hour reading, there were concerns that smoke could have resulted in some monitoring stations recording moderate levels earlier today.
However, he said, southwesterly winds this afternoon were expected to blow much of that smoke out of the valley and that air quality was expected to remain in the healthy range today and the rest of the week.
National Weather Service officials this morning said no weather patterns similar to what came through Tuesday were in the area today. Thunderstorms in southern Lincoln County and the northeasternmost section of Clark County produced the strong gusts of wind Tuesday, they said.
Like a balloon suddenly and swiftly expelling air, the winds moved quickly from the northeast to the southwest of the valley, said Charlie Schlott, a meteorologist with the Las Vegas office of the National Weather Service.
The storm moved through the valley in about a hour. But before it had fully lifted, it had reduced visibility at McCarran International Airport to about five or six miles and at North Las Vegas Airport to about 1.75 miles, Schlott said. Visibility at both airports is normally 10 miles, he said.
Despite the conditions, there were no delays, postponements or cancellations of flights, McCarran airport spokeswoman Debbie Millett said.
The gusty winds that carried the dust also knocked down power lines, blacking out about 3,000 Nevada Power Company customers, spokeswoman Sonia Headen said. The power company was notified of the outage about 8 p.m.
Power outages affected homes and businesses along Las Vegas Boulevard North to Nellis Boulevard, East Charleston Boulevard to Boulder Highway and Sahara Avenue to Boulder Highway.
By 10 p.m. about 2,000 customers were still without power, but by 10:52 p.m. all power was restored, Headen said.
The power outage was blamed in connection with a wreck in Las Vegas.
Metro Police said four people were arrested after the allegedly stolen car they were in, a 1997 green Honda Accord, went through the St. Louis-Fremont intersection about 9:30 p.m. and collided with another car before fleeing the scene. The traffic lights at the intersection were not working because of the power outage, police said.
The other car's driver, a woman, was taken to the University Medical Center trauma unit, police said. The names of the people who were arrested were not immediately available for release.
The high winds caused drivers with at least two taxi companies to call in warnings to their dispatchers.
"I heard them say, 'Holy cow!' a couple of times," said Linda Palen, a dispatcher with Lucky Cab Co. One of her drivers also said he almost lost an open door to the wind.
Steve Findlay, a dispatcher with Deluxe Taxicab Service, said one of his drivers also called to report poor visibility and high winds.
The dispatcher, in turn, told all of his drivers to take caution. Over the radio he ordered his drivers to reduce their speeds to 5 mph below the speed limit, to turn on their headlights and to insist that passengers buckle up.
The Nevada Highway Patrol reported no collisions attributed to the wind storm.
storm, but According to the weather service, wind speed reached a high of 48 mph in one area of Lake Mead. At the North Las Vegas Airport, gusts reached 44 mph, Schlott said. No rain fell from the thunderheads that caused the dust storm.
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