PHOENIX — Forecasters issued flood watches Monday for northern and central Arizona, including the Grand Canyon, after the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel caused severe flooding in Las Vegas over the weekend, The Associated Press reported.
Las Vegas received 1.08 inches of rain through Sunday morning, tying the city’s all-time daily rainfall record for October, according to the National Weather Service. The last time that much rain fell in a single October day there was 1947.
Videos shared on social media showed water rushing down a street near the Las Vegas Strip.
“We’ve seen the worst of what Rachel brought … but unfortunately we are looking at the disturbed weather still lingering,” weather service meteorologist Andrew Orrison said. Localized flash flooding remained a risk across the region Monday, he said.
The flood watches ran through Monday afternoon for a wide area that included much of Utah, southeast Idaho and northern and central Arizona. Orrison said the additional rain was tied to a separate weather system moving across the West, not Rachel, and was expected to end by Wednesday.
Rachel also brought wind, rain and unusually large waves to the Southern California coast over the weekend, forcing some oceanside residents in Long Beach to evacuate.
In metro Phoenix, scattered showers moved through parts of the Valley on Monday, with more rain expected overnight, KTAR News reported.
Sources: KTAR News/AP. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Julian Lupyan / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
