Claire Reid
The Las Vegas strip was hit with flash floods following thunderstorms and heavy rain showers on Thursday night.
The city was forced to issue a ‘Flash Flood Warning and Severe Thunderstorm Warning’ for Las Vegas Valley after the bad weather.
Footage shared on social media showed the streets of Vegas flooded with water, while others showed rain pouring into buildings, including casinos - you can see a clip here:
The Clark County regional flood control district's account posted on Twitter to say: "Water depths in Las Vegas Wash and Flamingo Wash near Nellis continue to rise. Stay away from flood channels and let them do their jobs tonight.”
In a post on Twitter, National Weather Service Las Vegas tweeted to say a flood warning would stay in place until the early hours of Friday (29 July) morning.
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It wrote: “The rain has ended across most of the #Vegas Valley but extensive runoff continues across our local washes and drainages, and areas of standing water persist. A Flood Advisory will remain in effect through 2:45 am.”
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told CBS that there have been at least eight vehicle accidents since the rain started but didn’t make it clear if all of them were weather-related.
Police also announced one road had to be closed after a tree fell down.
Local airports were also struggling due to the extreme weather, with one frustrated traveller telling the New York Post her flight to Toronto had been ‘delayed an hour so far and maybe more’.
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While earlier yesterday, Harry Reid International Airport was experiencing departure delays of around 50 minutes.
More than 7,200 people have been left without power, NV Energy has said, with most outages in downtown Las Vegas and the east valley.
Simon Jowitt, an economic geologist and professor at the University of Las Vegas, told the New York Post: “We’ve got good drainage systems but sometimes the water just overloads them.
“It can also be dangerous for homeless people who sometimes live in the drainage systems for shelter.
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“The other thing is that we don’t often get rain so it’s hard to check whether roofs and the like are actually waterproof; probably what has happened in the casinos tonight.
“These rains don’t happen that often, but we’ve had a few days in a row now.”
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