Once-In-A-Thousand-Year Death Valley Flood Strands 1000 People

“After nine days I let the horse run free, ‘Cause the desert had turned to sea. There were plants and birds and rocks and things. There was sand and hills and rings.”-America

Death Valley National Park and rain are antonyms. That was until this past weekend when a once-in-a-thousand-year rain storm hit the desert. On Friday, a 1.46 rain storm was recorded at Furnace Creek. Five hundred tourists and five hundred staff members were stranded by the storm. What comes next is the big question for the famous National Park.

The stats on this flash flooding event are absurd. CNN reports that the 1.46 inches of recorded rain is the second highest total since they started measuring precipitation in 1911. In more than a century of recorded rain totals, sixty-one of those years didn’t even reach Friday’s rain event. The rain storm amounts to 70% of the area’s annual rainfall, and 1300% of the average amount of rain in August. Before Friday’s storm, Death Valley had only seen .04 inches of rain in 2022. The Inn at Deer Valley had approximately sixty cars that were trapped in the mud and debris. The National Weather Service described it as a once-in-a-thousand-year event.

At this point, most of the water has receded, leading to debris and mud to remove. All roads are currently closed to outside guests. Repairs to the roads could take days to months, which is similar to the circumstances experienced at Yellowstone National Park in June. If you’re planning to visit Death Valley in the next couple of weeks, you may want to reschedule.

Some photos and videos of the scenes, along with updates from Death Valley National Park are below.

About six hours of this but we made it out safely and with no vehicle damage. Helped as many people as possible along the way. Hopefully everyone else made it out without incident! pic.twitter.com/iqHbsvtpMC

— John Sirlin (@SirlinJohn) August 5, 2022