Strong thunderstorms brought heavy rains over the weekend to several areas of Nye County, dropping precipitation amounts that have not been seen in the area in several years.
The four-day storm total for Pahrump saw a total of 1.18 inches of rain dumped on the valley, according to the National Weather Service. Thursday had .05 inches of rain, Friday saw .13 inches of rain, Saturday saw the highest single-day total of the storm of .56 inches of rain and Sunday had .44 inches of rain.
The fact that it rained for four days straight was unusual for the area, but coupled with the storms from earlier in the month, the rainfall total for the month so far is “very unusual” according to National Weather Service meteorologist Nathan Foster.
October has seen 2.41 inches of rain so far, marking the most rain to ever fall during the month, Foster explained.
“It’s definitely the wettest October on record and we’ve still got 13 days to go until the end of the month,” Foster said. “The second highest total for the month was from 2004 and that was 1.79 inches, and we cleared that easily.”
Systems coming in off the coast are responsible for the above-average rain counts, which Foster said are rarely seen during this time of year.
“We’ve had a couple of low pressure systems off the Pacific and this one combined with one dropping down from the Pacific Northwest, and they were just so slow moving,” he said. “We’ve had an excessive amount of moisture in the air, which is unusual for October to have this amount of moisture.”
The precipitation amounts also account for the wettest month in Pahrump since December 2010, when 3.11 inches of rain drenched Pahrump.
Beatty and Amargosa Valley saw flooding and road closures, despite receiving a significantly lower amount of rain officially.
Beatty had a weekend rain total of .38 inches, while Amargosa Valley saw .33 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.
The area will dry out through the week with highs forecast for the mid-to-upper 70s and lows in the mid 50s with mostly sunny conditions.
Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.