Wild weather in Utah; rescues and record rainfall

[bob rulz]

Today was a wild day of weather in eastern and southern Utah. The small town of Hanksville experienced perhaps the wildest day of weather. One mobile home was washed away in a flash flood, and a school bus just outside of town was stranded for several hours after floodwaters washed out the road in both directions. Luckily, all 29 people on the bus and 2 people in the mobile home were rescued. Hanksville itself, meanwhile, witnessed an all-time 24-hour precipitation record of 3 inches, breaking the record of 1.80 inches set back on August 14, 1952. Large areas of southern and eastern Utah witnessed at least 2 inches, and perhaps 75% of the state saw at least an inch fall. The hardest-hit areas recorded 3-4 inches. Most impressively, the Tavapus Plateau in east-central Utah saw almost 6 inches of rain! Almost all of it in the last day to day and a half.

On the bench of Layton, several homes were evacuated after an inch of rain fell in less than an hour on an area that saw a huge fire only 3 weeks ago. Luckily no major damage has occurred, but the rain is expected to linger through tomorrow. Luckily, southern and eastern Utah are mostly done with the rain. Overall, 15 daily rainfall records were set across the state.

Brigham City 0.56 0.28 1970
Bryce Canyon Airport 1.87 0.24 1972
Delta 0.68 0.42 1985
hanksville* 3.00 0.39 1993
Nephi 0.30 0.29 1977
price 1.32 0.14 2004
Provo byu 0.26 0.18 1994
Spanish Fork 0.46 0.28 1946
Utah test range 0.45 0.04 1994
Wendover 0.09 0.07 1939

Bluff, 1.70, new daily record.
Jensen, 0.76, new daily record.
Moab, 1.63, new daily record.
2 miles east of Monticello, 2.62, new daily record.
Roosevelt, 0.92, new daily record.

More rain is expected in northern Utah through tomorrow, but luckily it appears that the rain has mostly ended over southern and eastern Utah. Unfortunately, however, another potentially powerful storm is set to impact southern Utah on Monday and Tuesday. Luckily, no one has been hurt or killed (at least, not yet). Flash flooding was reported and is still being reported throughout the slot canyons and rugged terrain of southern Utah, and a few other towns have dealt with minor flooding or are preparing for flooding. Overall this is one to go down in the record books (it's been a long time since anywhere in Utah saw 6 inches of rain with 1 storm that barely lasted more than a day).

[Scott Patterson]

Anyone else see the Utah flooding? I have never seen anything like it. This was a 100 year storm. Rivers (not creeks!) almost 1000 feet high were pouring off all the cliffs in Capitol Reef National Park. I was afraid to take out my camera, but had to for one shot.

The campground in Capitol Reef itself was a river. Cliffs were collapsing as well with landslides galore. Parts of Hanksville (supposedly the 2nd driest place in the state) were under 5 feet of water and a family had to be rescued by hovercraft. Every backcountry road was closed and Highway 24 was washed out in one place and buried by debri in others. That morning rivers were also flowing along the highway to Moab.

Another storm hit Monday when we were hiking out even though when we left they claimed 20% chance of rain. More flooding, but we got out of there as fast as we could. Dozens of waterfalls were spilling off the cliffs in Chimney Rock Canyon.

The storm in Hanksville produced 3.00 inches of rain on the 7th alone, plus quite a bit more on the other dates. This record was 8 times the old record for the date and almost double the all time record for any date on any day of the year. Records in Hanksville go back to 1898.

I've seen it rain this hard and long in the tropics, but never in the desert. Most storms in the desert are intense but breif thunderstorms. This one lasted continuously for over 24 hours and then went to repeat itself only two days later.

While three inches in a day might not seem like that much to someone from the hurricane belt, keep in mind this area is mostly barren rock with little soil or vegitation to absorb the water. Even .25 inches causes some big floods in the desert and everything just flows off rock.

[Scott Patterson]

Overall, 15 daily rainfall records were set across the state.

Actually more! They just posted 15 of them, but there were many more. One that absolutely shattered the old record was in Capitol Reef NNational Park where I posted above. 1/2 their average annual rainfall fell on the 7th!