TERRY TANG
Associated Press
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A weakened Pacific storm slammed much of southern Arizona, but it appeared to spare Tucson on Wednesday night.
Rainfall from remnants of Hurricane Odile was steadily hitting south and east of Tucson, according to the National Weather Service. The agency issued a flash-flood warning for Nogales, where a major street was flooded with several inches of water.
Officials in Nogales initially thought they would have to evacuate two nearby trailer parks where about 100 families live, Mayor Arturo Garino said late Wednesday. However, the water receded, and the city’s public works department was able to clear the street.
“The debris on the street was minimal,” Garino said. “Everything was taken care of within an hour and a half.”
A larger wash that cuts through the middle of the city was on the edge of spilling over earlier. But it also receded from an at-risk level of 12 feet to between 5 and 6 feet, Garino said. The border city, which is 70 miles south of Tucson, is downhill of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. As a result, rainwater from the Mexican side doesn’t take long to seep into the city’s washes.
A flash-flood watch was also in effect for four counties — Santa Cruz, Cochise, Graham and Greenlee.
Meanwhile, a flash-flood watch for Tucson that was to expire Thursday was canceled. There is a 40 percent chance of overnight rain in Tucson, but it likely won’t amount to flooding danger, according to the National Weather Service. The city was originally expected to receive between 2 and 5 inches of rain, but it now seems to be on the edge of tropical depression Odile.
“If the rainfall occurring 50-80 miles south of us was over Tucson, there would be really big problems,” meteorologist Gary Zell said.
Tucson residents on Wednesday morning were bracing for the possibility of an epic storm. People lined up in bumper-to-bumper traffic and scooped sand into trash and canvas tote bags as rain began to fall on Arizona.
It’s the second blast of hurricane-related weather to hit the desert region in the past two weeks — the result of an especially active Pacific storm season. Odile was once a Category 3 Hurricane, but it was downgraded to a tropical depression by the time rain started falling in Arizona.
Odile tore through the Mexican resort state of Baja California Sur late Sunday and Monday, where residents were still struggling Wednesday with a lack of power and drinking water. There were scattered reports of looting, and the Los Cabos airport was closed to commercial travel.
At the Arizona Department of Transportation’s Traffic Operations Center in Phoenix, agency spokesman Doug Nintzel and other workers looked over a bank of monitors that showed traffic statewide and the track of the storm as it moved from Mexico into the U.S.
“It is unusual for us,” he said. “We would be expecting to start getting into the drier fall season here in the area, so you never know with Mother Nature, and we’ve just said all hands on deck. You need to prepare for this type of thing, and we’re doing the best we can, trying to keep our system as operational as possible.”
Last week, the remnants of Hurricane Norbert caused deadly flash flooding in Arizona. The single-day rainfall totals in Phoenix eclipsed the average total precipitation for the entire summer. Freeways became submerged after pumping stations could not keep up with the downpour, and sections of Interstates 10 and 17 were closed most of the day.
Despite the heavy rains, it still might not be enough to pull Arizona out of its drought.
Rain alone will not help refill reservoirs on the Colorado River. The current drought is drawing down Colorado River storage — in Lake Mead and Lake Powell in particular — to dangerous levels, said Jonathan Overpeck of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona.
The snowmelt from snowpack is what fills reservoirs that supply drinking water. So the upcoming winter, not hurricane season, is a crucial weather period.
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