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Monsoon rain swept through downtown Las Vegas on Thursday night, throwing casino carpets on the Strip through leaky roofs and running through a parking garage that looked more like a whitewater rapids course.
Videos shared on social media showed rainwater cascading off a video board and covering the floor of the gambling house at Circa Casino and Resort; lights dripping heavily at Caesars Palace; Planet Hollywood gets messy; and the rising waters on the floor of the Linq Hotel garage. A player at the Fremont Hotel and Casino continued to play during the deluge.
The Las Vegas Weather Service warned of wind gusts approaching 70 mph, and asked Twitter followers to “take shelter now!” Las Vegas Fire and Rescue tweeted that it responded to 330 calls for service, mostly weather-related, and rescued seven people in swift water.
Multiple intersections were flooded. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that more than 7,000 customers faced power outages after 10 p.m.
Water poured into casinos and flooded roads after monsoon rain in Las Vegas on July 28. (Video: Storyful)
Video I received from an employee working near the Circa sportsbook. Clean up after the floods that just happened. You probably don’t see that every day. @8NewsNow #8NN
Courtesy: Dan Miller pic.twitter.com/CxmjHH78Rn
— Victoria Saha (@VictoriaSaha) July 29, 2022
Instead of seeping into the desert terrain, stormwater tends to pool in Las Vegas, meaning that relatively small rainfall can lead to flooding.
Storms brought on by the monsoon prompted the National Weather Service to issue severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings Thursday night. Radar showed a narrow but intense corridor of storms sweeping into Las Vegas around 8:30 p.m. local time from the north.
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Harry Reid International Airport received 0.32 inches of rain, about its average amount for the entire month of July, while “a couple of pockets of the city got more than an inch,” he wrote the Meteorological Service.
Thursday marked the second night of monsoon storms in the city, with more expected in the southwest, according to the National Weather Service.
The summer in Nevada has been marked by drought; Water levels in Lake Mead have reached their lowest point since 1937, according to NASA, exposing three sets of human remains in the reservoir since May.
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Across the country, disastrous flooding in eastern Kentucky has killed at least 16 people since Wednesday. The historic rainfall around St. Louis on Tuesday caused flash flooding that killed one person. Both showers are considered 1 in 1,000 year rainfall events.