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Drenching in Death Valley

Bob Neil, Thursday August 11, 2022 - 12:40 AEST

The iconic American desert hotspot of Death Valley has just had extremely heavy rain by its standards, with flash flooding stranding at least 1,000 people.

Major flash flooding in Death Valley National Park this morning. Approximately two dozen vehicles trapped in mud and rock debris at the Inn at Death Valley. Took nearly 6 hours to get out. #cawx #stormhour pic.twitter.com/3rDFUgY7ws

— John Sirlin (@SirlinJohn) August 5, 2022

Death Valley, in the Mojave Desert of eastern California near the Nevada border, is America's lowest, driest and hottest place.

In June last year, we ran a story here at Weatherzone about the aptly named Furnace Creek recording a temperature of 53°C – at that stage the hottest recorded temp anywhere in the world in 2021.

But Furnace Creek was literally only just warming up. In August last year, it recorded a day of 54.4°C. (Here's our video on that.)

So here we are in August 2022 and the weather picture in Death Valley is currently dramatically different.

Earlier this week, Furnace Creek recorded 1.46 inches of rainfall (about 37 mm), the greatest amount ever recorded in August.

Death Valley averages just 0.11 inches (about 2.8 mm) of rain in August.

Indeed, the remarkable recent downpour was within about half a millimetre of the highest rainfall total in Death Valley on any day of the year.

It was also about three-quarters of the 1.94 inches (about 42 mm) that the area typically receives, on average, over the course of an entire year.

Image: The waters will presumably bring life to Death Valley. Source: @Aristide_in_Wonderland via Instagram.

"The floodwaters pushed dumpster containers into parked cars, which caused cars to collide into one another," the US National Park Service said in a statement.

"Additionally, many facilities are flooded including hotel rooms and business offices."

Death Valley National Park was closed for a while, however floodwaters have now begun to recede, with fine weather in the forecast and somewhat "mild" temps for August on the cards from this weekend onwards, with nothing higher than about 42°C or 43°C in the forecast.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2022

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