Destructive rain in Death Valley and flooded Vegas casinos mark a summer of extreme weather
Photographer John Sirlin was in a canyon in the northeast part of Death Valley National Park late Thursday to shoot lightning in an expected thunderstorm.
Then the lightning petered out and the storm became a nonstop torrential downpour that lasted for hours, bringing near-record rainfall to one of the hottest, driest places on Earth.
“It seemed serious,” said the 46-year-old from Chandler, Arizona, who also leads storm-chasing workshops. “It was a magnitude of flooding I had not experienced before.”
More analysis will be needed to determine whether climate change helped drive the storm’s intensity. But its extreme nature is consistent with what can be expected as global temperatures rise, experts said, drawing parallels with the historic flooding that damaged Yellowstone National Park in June.
“We’re already in a
