Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rain expected to continue

A man died after being pulled out of floodwater in a drainage canal Monday afternoon in North Las Vegas after the valley had been deluged by rain throughout the day.

A passer-by spotted the man in the rushing water of a flood channel along Lake Mead Boulevard west of Interstate 15 about 4:30 p.m. and flagged down a motorist to call 911, North Las Vegas Police spokesman Sean Walker said.

North Las Vegas firefighters pulled the man out of the the water soon after they arrived but he died later that night at University Medical Center, Walker said.

The person who tried to get help to the man had at least given him a fighting chance to survive, Walker said.

"He's fortunate that a good Samaritan saw him and cared enough," Walker said.

Plastic packaging from defibrillator electrodes was strewn on the ground where rescuers had worked to revive the man.

Walker did not know how the man had wound up in the water or how long he had been in it.

He may have fallen in; the concrete banks of the channel are steep and slick in the rain, Walker said. The area also is frequented by homeless people, but authorities did not know this morning whether the dead man was a homeless person, Walker said.

That first swift-water rescue of the year in the Las Vegas Valley came as flood control canals and basins filled during Monday's steady downpour.

The storm that caused the drenching, coming off the California coast, is a sign of things to come, forecasters said. It is part of a system that is expected to bring rain and patchy fog again later today along with snow to the mountains and potential flooding for the next week.

Coming off the fourth-wettest recorded year in Las Vegas' history, 2005 could continue on that track because the jet stream, a river of wind that helps drive storms around the globe, has tapped into tropical moisture that normally swirls around the Hawaiian Islands.

Known as the "pineapple express," the tropical moisture could enhance any storms forming in the Pacific Northwest before driving south down the California coast then swinging into Nevada, said weather service meteorologist Donald Maker.

A national network of climatologists has watched this happen several times since October, when the first flush of rain fell in the Southwest, said Kelly Redmond of the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.

"It's quite fascinating," Redmond said. "We didn't expect this to happen. It's taken a lot of us aback."

Rain Monday caused spot flooding throughout the valley. It dropped .041 of an inch of rain at the weather service's office in the southwest valley and 15 inches of snow at Mount Charleston since Monday morning.

Roads in the valley were clogged as drivers tried slogging through the rain. There were reports of debris in the roads, washed out pavement and other minor problems. Other than the man swept into the flood control channel, considered a typical problem in rainy weather as people get too close, emergency officials did not report any additional swift-water rescues.

Local firefighters train year-round for swift-water rescues such as Monday's storm and typically are kept busy when it rains in Southern Nevada. The new year is already bringing record-breaking weather to the valley with water flowing across streets and dozens of accidents occurring on the rain-slicked pavement.

The all-time rainfall record for Jan. 3 at McCarran International Airport was shattered Monday when 0.29 of an inch of rain fell by noon, weather service meteorologist Andy Bailey said.

The old record for Jan. 3 of 0.28 of an inch of rain was set in 1955 and tied in 1995. The average rainfall total for the day is 0.02 of an inch. A total of 0.69 of an inch was officially reported Monday night, the amount of rain Las Vegas normally receives in an average January.

The total of 7.76 inches of rain for 2004 put it as the fourth wettest year in local weather records kept since 1934.

The steady beat of raindrops ushered in a wet spell that could last for a week to 10 days, weather service forecasters said.

The stormy weather was responsible for equipment failure near Sahara Avenue and Maryland Parkway that blacked out between 400 and 500 Nevada Power Co. customers Monday, utility spokesman Edgar Patino said. The outage occurred west of Maryland, south of Eastern Avenue, east of Linwood Avenue and north of Karen Avenue. It began at 5:36 p.m. and Nevada Power crews had the electricity flowing by 7 p.m.

Winter storms bringing snow to Southern Nevada's mountains and rainshowers to the valley are expected to continue for a week to 10 days with brief respites of clear sky. Rain is expected to continue until this afternoon with the next rainfall arriving late Thursday.

The U.S. Forest Service this morning continued its avalanche advisory for the Kyle and Lee canyons as well as the backcountry areas of the Spring Mountains area near Mount Charleston, saying large patches of unstable snow could cause destructive avalanches.

The advisory does not include the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort, which has its own avalanche control program, according to a forest service statement.

Because the forest service is not equipped to monitor possible avalanche activity in the backcountry areas, the agency urges those who venture to that area watch snow conditions before they go.

With a weak El Nino this winter, weather scientists believe the western United States may be in for a Madden-Julian oscillation, also known as an intraseasonal oscillation.

The oscillation features a week to 10 days of rainfall, that can bring flooding. The weather service issued a flood watch for Southern Nevada until 9 p.m. Monday.

The "pineapple express" last arrived in California during the winter of 1996-97, according to the National Climate Prediction Center.

Heavy flooding in California and the Pacific Northwest caused up to $3 billion in damage.

The Madden-Julian oscillation is so rare that there has been only three of them in the past century, Redmond said.

"The desert wildflowers should be beautiful this spring," he said.

Although Southern Nevada has been gripped by more than five years of drought, whether this wetter winter will break the dry spell is still questionable.

Stormy weather affects local areas and may not refill the reservoirs along the Colorado River stretching from Wyoming to the Mexican border.

"You could still be in drought across the region and be drowning," Redmond said.

So far the Rocky Mountain snowpack is about average, but it will be April before climatologists and hydrologists can predict what the spring runoff will be.

"You can't tell from one storm or one winter," Redmond said. "A climate change has the effect of loading the dice," so weather patterns would repeat more often.

"You have to have many, many, many throws of the dice."

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