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Death Valley National Park was closed Saturday after exceptional rain drenched the park on Friday, causing flash flooding that left about 1,000 visitors and park staff stranded.
The park received 1.46 inches of rain in the Furnace Creek area, just shy of the previous calendar day record of 1.47 inches, set on April 15, 1988. That’s about three-quarters than the area normally receives in an average year. 1.94 inches, and is the largest amount ever recorded in August, the lowest, driest and hottest location in the United States, Death Valley averages only 0.11 inches of rain in August .
The National Park Service said in a news release Saturday that national park roads remain closed, but “visitors who were previously unable to leave area hotels [were] able to leave carefully with police escorts.” He said the water has receded in most areas of the park and “extensive deposits of mud and gravel” remain.
As of Saturday morning, “everything is fine,” said Nikki Jones, an assistant server at a restaurant at the park’s Ranch Inn, who also lives there and posted a video of her colleague’s flooding on Twitter. . Jones told The Washington Post that the floodwaters receded by Friday afternoon, but light debris remained on the roads.
“CalTrans has done an incredible job of cleaning it up as quickly as possible,” he told The Post in a Twitter message. “I drove the roads today.”
Jones said some people are stuck at the Inn at the Oasis because of stuck cars, “but people can get out of the park today.”
“Flood waters pushed dumpster containers into parked cars, causing the cars to crash into each other,” the National Park Service said in a statement Friday. “In addition, many facilities are flooded, including hotel rooms and business offices.
The torrent was triggered by the southwest monsoon, which develops each summer as the prevailing winds shift from the west to the extreme south, causing a surge of moisture to the north. This moisture can fuel heavy downpours that quench the parched desert landscape. Because there is little land to absorb rainfall, any measurable rainfall can cause flooding in low-lying areas, and heavier rainfall can accumulate in normally dry streams, causing flash floods.
This year’s southwest monsoon has been particularly strong, helping to alleviate drought conditions in the region, but also causing many major floods. Recently, severe flooding has affected areas around Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Las Vegas floods send water gushing through casinos
The Death Valley flooding also comes amid a series of extreme rainfall events in the lower 48 states. During the week of late July and early August, three 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events occurred, flooding St. Louis, eastern Kentucky and southeastern Illinois. Earlier this summer, Yellowstone National Park also flooded.
How two 1 in 1,000 year rain events hit the US in two days
Death Valley holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, as well as several runners-up. Officially, Death Valley reached 134 degrees on July 10, 1913, but some climatologists have questioned the legitimacy of this reading. The next highest temperature on record, 131 degrees in Kebili, Tunisia, set on July 7, 1931, is also controversial. Last summer and the summer before, Death Valley reached 130 degrees, which may be the pair of highest temperatures reliably measured on Earth if you don’t count the Tunisian readings of 1931 and of the Valley of Death in 1913.
Death Valley soars to 130 degrees, matching highest temperature on Earth in at least 90 years
The rain flooded the park, trapping vehicles in the debris, according to a video tweeted by John Sirlin, an Arizona-based storm chaser. He wrote that roads were blocked by rocks and fallen palm trees, and that visitors struggled for six hours to get out of the park.
Major flash flooding in Death Valley National Park this morning. Approximately two dozen vehicles stuck in mud and rock debris at the Vall de la Mort Inn. It took almost 6 hours to come out. #cawx #stormhour pic.twitter.com/3rDFUgY7ws
— John Sirlin (@SirlinJohn) August 5, 2022
Earlier this week, flash flooding hit parts of western Nevada, forcing the closure of some roads leading into the park from Las Vegas. Flash flooding also affected parts of northern Arizona.
Flash floods close roads in Death Valley National Park
Sirlin told The Associated Press that Friday’s rain began around 2 a.m. and was “more extreme than anything I’ve ever seen.”
“There were at least two dozen cars that were wrecked and stuck,” he said, adding that he saw washes flowing several feet deep, though he didn’t see anyone hurt, and the NPS didn’t report of wounded until Friday.
Last July, rare summer rains also drenched Death Valley, bringing 0.74 inches in one day to Furnace Creek about two weeks after the park set a world record for hottest average daily temperature, at 118.1 degrees Fahrenheit.
Desert showers: Rare summer rains drenched Death Valley and parts of California on Monday
Scientists say human-caused climate warming is intensifying extreme precipitation events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found some evidence that southwest monsoon rainfall has increased since the 1970s.