A year’s worth of rain fell in the matter of only three hours in parts of Death Valley National Park, leaving over a 1,000 people stranded.
According to officials, flash flooding resulted after heavy thunderstorms hit the national park in just three hours. The flooding caused damage to dozens of vehicles, closed roads throughout the park, and trapped about 1,000 visitors and staff.
Thankfully, while there were no injuries reported, about 500 visitors and 500 park staff were trapped inside the park before emergency crews escorted cars out of the area.
Death Valley National Park wrote on its Facebook page that authorities are continuing aerial searches for stranded motorists but have yet to receive reports of stranded cars.
A vehicle partially buried by flooding in Death Valley National Park, /National Park Service
The park near the California-Nevada state line received at least 4.3 centimeters of rain at the Furnace Creek area, which park officials in a statement said represented “nearly an entire year’s worth of rain in one morning.” The park’s average annual rainfall is 4.8 centimeters.
This is indeed a Death Valley. Floods everywhere 🤦️🤦️🤦️ pic.twitter.com/TPvHa50pCm
— Vince (@vincekakooza) August 6, 2022
More details of this report from ‘100 Percent Fedup’:
A statement by the National Park said that the flooding pushed dumpster bins into parked vehicles and caused collisions while also flooding facilities, including hotel rooms and business offices. Additionally, a water system line that was being repaired broke due to the flooding, leaving parts of the park without water.
One visitor and photographer, John Sirlin, described the scene.
“It was more extreme than anything I’ve seen there,’ Sirlin said.
“I’ve never seen it to the point where entire trees and boulders were washing down. The noise from some of the rocks coming down the mountain was just incredible.”
Although this specific flood was isolated to the National Park and resulted in no deaths or injuries, it is still being used to peddle global warming fear-mongering, with one report stating that by 2050 rising sea levels will put some neighborhoods in a near-perpetual state of flooding.
No matter the cause of this incident, however, the flooding was powerful enough to cause a great deal of damage and strand 1,000 people overnight.
Sources: 100percentfedup, NBCnews
