Las Vegas Rain: In-Depth Stats
Introduction
Rain in Vegas occurs about as often as drawing that fourth ace in your hand. While wet days are few and far between, when it happen it is very beneficial to the desert. Unfortunately, the desert and Las Vegas are not equipped to handle heavy rainfall which occasionally produces flash flooding.
In this post, I will go examine some key insights about rainfall in Las Vegas including averages, extremes, and streaks.
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Averages
The average rainfall for Las Vegas is over 4 inches per year which easily makes it a desert. By comparison, Phoenix, Arizona has over 7 inches of rain per year with a stronger monsoon season. There are only about 28 days a year that receive measurable rain and only two of those exceed half an inch. The wettest month of the year is February when winter storms come in from the Pacific, but December and January also make up the majority of the annual rainfall. A secondary rain called the monsoon, occurs in the summer months but is more sporadic. This time of year can produce very heavy rain in brief periods causing flash flooding. The winter months see about three days per month with rain, and the monsoon produces three days as well in July and August.
Extremes
September 4th, 2023 saw flash flooding in Las Vegas
While the vast majority of days are dry (93%), occasionally heavy rain does occur. The most rain in one day occurred during a summer monsoon thunderstorm which dropped 2.57 inches in just a few hours. According to weather reports at the time, this caused significant damage, but the city of Las Vegas was young and did not have the infrastructure it does today. The most rain in one month happened in March 1992, an odd month for that kind of rainfall record, when 4.80 inches fell. Over the course of a year, the annual rainfall has varied from a high of 10.72” in 1941 - to only 0.56” in 1956. 1941 also saw the most number of wet days with 52, nearly double the normal.
Streaks
The longest stretch of wet days happened in 2003 and 1943 when six days in a row saw measurable rain. If this doesn’t seem like much, it isn’t! By comparison, Seattle’s wet streak record is 33 days. Imagine an entire month of rain. Las Vegas is much better at setting dry streaks. In fact, four of the top 10 have occurred since the year 2000. The longest stretch of dry days happened recently in 2020 when there were 240 days in a row without measurable rain. This exceeded the previous record by nearly three months and it was broken on December 17th, 2020.
Conclusion
There is nothing more to conclude about Las Vegas rainfall statistics. It’s a desert in every sense of the word. It is not without its extreme rain events but fortunately for the city they are rare.
