Monsoon rains and thunderstorms gripped Las Vegas Thursday evening for the second night in a row, causing flash flooding that turned parts of the Strip into rivers.
Up to an inch of rain fell on the city in about two hours, about half of the year’s rainfall in the drought-stricken area, said Andy Gorelow, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Nevada. Winds reached up to 71 miles per hour in the Las Vegas Valley, nearly the speed of a Category 1 hurricane.
Videos on social media showed flooded casinos and stranded cars on roads.
About 7,600 people were without power Thursday evening after the storm, according to local reports. By Friday morning, many of the outages had been fixed, leaving about 150 customers affected according to an outage map from Nevada Energy.
A local office of the state Department of Motor Vehicles had to open late Friday morning due to water damage and said on Twitter that some of its technology was affected.
Las Vegas expected the same system to blanket the area Friday evening. The Weather Service did not issue an official warning, but asked residents to “remain alert.”