In Las Vegas, water tumbled from casino ceilings for the second time in two weeks after torrential summer thunderstorms and torrential rain soaked the city.
Extraordinary footage from Planet Hollywood Casino on the Las Vegas Strip showed rain pouring through the ceiling as the city was flooded.
Sean Sable, who shared footage from inside Planet Hollywood, tweeted, “You won’t believe this but I’m not sure if it’s raining more inside Planet Hollywood or outside.”
It also started raining at Caesar’s Palace, and desperate staff tried to cordon off a flooded area with soaking-soaked slot machine chairs.
Outside, the city’s streets are largely impassable to motorists, having been blocked by flood waters or cordoned off by police as officials warned the public not to drive on the flooded streets.
But a driver was seen driving his car down the neon-soaked Las Vegas Strip when water rose over the vehicle’s bumper.
The intense thunderstorms and heavy rain left more than 17,500 people without power in Las Vegas Thursday night, reports KLAS 8 News Now.
The Las Vegas National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning Thursday evening and a flood warning until 12:15 a.m. Friday. The rain is expected to continue throughout the weekend, meteorologists said.
Extraordinary footage from Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas Strip showed rain pouring through the casino ceilings
Sean Sable, who shared footage from Planet Hollywood, tweeted, “You won’t believe this but I’m not sure if it’s raining more inside Planet Hollywood or outside.”
The Las Vegas National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning Thursday evening and a flood warning until 12:15 a.m. Friday. The rain is expected to continue throughout the weekend, meteorologists said
“I’ve never seen rain as heavy as it did tonight,” Richard Henderson of Vancouver, Canada, told the New York Post.
“The rain was so heavy you could barely see the flamingo across the street.”
Henderson, who was inside Caesar’s Palace when the rain began pouring through the ceiling, said frantic staff cordoned off a flooded area “with a makeshift barrier of soaking wet slot machine chairs.”
He said: “One quick look at the ceiling and we were shocked to see water pouring out of every sprinkler head and other spots.
“The sheer volume of water made one of my friends very nervous – she was very concerned about the possibility of more water coming in or the ceiling partially collapsing.”
Henderson added, “The lightning strikes were intense. I’ve never seen anything like it in Vegas.’
Outside, the neon-soaked Las Vegas Strip was flooded and a driver was seen driving his car down the street when water rose over the vehicle’s bumper
In Las Vegas, too, basements were flooded after the heavy rains on Thursday night
The rain is expected to continue throughout the weekend, Chris Outler, the lead forecaster for the National Weather Service Las Vegas, told The Post.
Outler said: “There are daily chances. Right now the rain has subsided across the valley, but almost every day, especially in the afternoon and evening hours, we have about a 30% chance of Las Vegas.’
Thursday night’s flooding comes after Las Vegas experienced similarly violent thunderstorms two weeks ago.
Heavy rains on June 29 caused water to cascade from the casino ceiling and pool on the carpet of a stadium-sized sports betting area.
Casino guests posted videos as water poured from the ceilings of the Caesars Palace and Planet Hollywood resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and behind a giant video display at the Circa Hotel Casino sports book downtown.
One video showed a man continuing to play a casino slot machine as water fell around him.
“A night we will never forget,” said Circa owner Derek Stevens in a Twitter post.
The annual weather pattern has brought a parade of storms across the U.S. Southwest in recent weeks, causing flooding in normally dry washes, inches of rain and rescue operations.
While the rain is welcome in a drought-stricken region, it’s causing headaches in neighborhoods where wildfires have stripped the land of the vegetation that normally slows and partially absorbs floodwaters.
Surface levels at the region’s drought-hit water supply — the Lake Mead reservoir behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River — have dropped to less than 30%.
While runoff from Las Vegas-area storms will reach the lake, monsoon humidity is unlikely to affect the ongoing regional drought, said John Adair, a senior meteorologist at the Weather Service’s office.
“For that, we generally rely on the winter season, when multiple Pacific storms roll in and cover a wide area with rain and snow,” the meteorologist said. “That can have a significant impact on the drought.”