The Las Vegas Strip more resembled nearby Lake Mead on Thursday night as flash flooding severely impacted Sin City.
The New York Post reported that the Strip, along with casinos like Circa, Caesar’s Palace and Planet Hollywood, parking lots and airports were either flooded or impacted by heavy rain.
Video footage posted on Twitter showed Vegas streets becoming river-like and water pouring into some casinos and the parking lot at the Linq, another resort on the Strip.
Las Vegas Fire Information Officer Tim Szymanski told the Post there had been no reported injuries.
One Las Vegas resident named Alexander Wolf described “curtains” of rain falling outside his window to The Post.
“Lightning was nearly constant, and the power went out several times,” he told The Post.
There is a monsoon season from July to September, Simon Jowitt, an economic geologist and professor at the University of Las Vegas, told The Post but added flash floods don’t happen too often.
“We’ve got good drainage systems but sometimes the water just overloads them,” Jowitt said.
“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 (Thursday night).”
Local airports were seeing flight delays on departures – Harry Reid International Airport was averaging 50 minutes earlier Thursday – due to flooding and FlightAware.com was reporting in-bound planes being held until at least 11 p.m. at their outbound location.
“My flight has been delayed an hour so far and maybe more,” Toronto-bound passenger Shondra Kayd told The Post.
“A lot of planes had to land at different airports.”
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