Las Vegas drought comes to an end as first rain falls after 214-day dry spell. “We’ve only ever seen 200-plus days without rain happen twice since 1937,”

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1. Las Vegas has just experienced its first measurable rain in 214 days.

   It was only 0.01 inch, but the precipitation Thursday was enough to break the second longest dry spell in the Nevada city’s recorded history. Las Vegas saw a record-setting 240 days of no rain in 2020.

   “We’ve only ever seen 200-plus days without rain happen twice since 1937,” said Moran Steffman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

   “It really emphasizes how dry it’s been,” Steffman told The Center Square Friday.

2. While that’s great, i don’t think .01 inches of rain means “the drought comes to an end”

3. In my zip code in AZ we havent had measurable rainfall since early Feb 2024. Every time it is supposed to rain it misses us and we either get nothing or a sprinkle for a few minutes. I’m 15 min from downtown Phx. Normal annual rainfall is 8 inches.

4. My mother lives in Virginia and her area bounces between extreme dryness punctuated by heavy rains. But since the soil is so dry, it all runs off and can cause flooding/erosion. And at the same time, there’s not enough rainfall going into the aquifer to replenish it and sinkholes have been popping up. These extreme weather events are becoming more common and have a huge economic and financial impact along with putting lives at risk. We really need to be building catchments and sponge cities and other systems to try to mitigate climate change along with addressing the core causes, but instead we’ll likely just see the problem growing worse for the next couple of years. Maybe when our agricultural systems are disrupted and prices skyrocket we’ll finally lean into the problem.

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