Lightning adds glow to Pahrump skies as storms fire up

The nighttime skies were aglow in Pahrump on Wednesday night as summer storms moved through the region.

The National Weather Service didn’t have any watches or warnings out for the Pahrump area, though reports of wind, rain and a lot of lightning were reported during the fast-moving storm system that moved up the side of the Spring Mountains.

The Red Rock Canyon area, the closest area to Pahrump that the weather service tracked during the storm, measured about a quarter-inch of rainfall.

In Pahrump, a power outage was reported about 5 a.m. Thursday, but the cause was not immediately attributed to the storm.

The outage occurred about 5 a.m., this morning and lasted about an hour. In all, 2,454 meters were affected in southwest Pahrump, Valley Electric Association reported. The cause remained under investigation.

Chris Outler of the weather service in Las Vegas said the Red Rock area had wind gusts of 44 mph, with some areas of the west side of Las Vegas seeing gusts of 60 mph-plus.

There was no major damage reported to the weather service on the storm, though there was a report of a tree falling onto a car in Las Vegas, Outler said.

The Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for parts of the northwest and north valley of the Las Vegas area.

The storm there produced pea-sized hail and several cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, “which made for a very dangerous storm,” meteorologist Alex Boothe said.

Winds were clocked more than 60 mph and as high as 71 mph, he said.

Several people shared storm and hail photos and videos on social media Wednesday evening.

Selwyn Harris of the Pahrump Valley Times and the Las Vegas Review-Journal staff contributed to this story.