Hot, humid air is expected to linger

Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2005 | 8:56 a.m.

After 13 years of marriage, Al and Sandy Baker agree on many things, but not the weather.

"I love it," Al Baker said Tuesday night as storm clouds blackened the skies south of the Galleria Mall parking lot at Sunset Road and Stephanie Street in Henderson.

The humid air was sweltering and Baker said he could smell more rain on the way.

"I love the heat," he said.

"And I hate it; it makes my allergies worse," Sandy Baker said, noting the couple moved here four years ago from New Hampshire.

"I know when I look out my bedroom window and it's black, I know we're going to get it," Sandy Baker said of their home south of Boulder Highway.

And "get it" southeastern Southern Nevada did on Tuesday.

Boulder City recorded an inch of rain through Tuesday night. In Caliente, a town in Lincoln County northeast of Las Vegas, the rain total was 1.18 inches.

National Weather Service forecasters said that there is no apparent break in the hot, humid weather bringing downpours to the Las Vegas Valley and surrounding areas in afternoons and evenings for at least the next week. Henderson recorded 0.45 of an inch by Tuesday night.

Henderson and Green Valley got rain, hail, lightning and thunder Tuesday afternoon and evening as the moist monsoonal flow dragged more humidity into Southern Nevada.

While water rushed down streets in Boulder City and Henderson, there were no reports of any significant flooding, authorities said.

Thunderstorms developed over Black Mountain, south of Henderson, after sunset Tuesday and swept across the valley through 10 p.m., National Weather Service meteorologist Barry Pierce said.

The Weather Service issued a flood advisory until midnight for Lake Mead National Recreation Area and Boulder City after rain fell at the rate of an inch in an hour Tuesday night.

A thunderstorm poured on Green Valley around 3 p.m., bringing hail that briefly whitened red sandstone rocks and pelted cars, trees and windows in offices and homes alike.

Although there was no official amount of rain at McCarran International Airport where weather records are gathered, the Black Mountain Detention Basin measured 0.51 of an inch from rain captured in a Regional Flood Control District gage.

The daytime high reached 101 degrees in Las Vegas, but temperatures in Henderson and Boulder City dropped 20 degrees with the evening storms.

Weather Service forecasters kept a watchful eye overnight on a severe thunderstorm in central Arizona in case it merged with the storms over Boulder City and Lake Mead.