Posted on 09/20/2014 9:13:58 AM PDT by SandRat
SIERRA VISTA — Thursday’s slow-moving storm dropped as much as 6 inches of rain during a 24-hour period on parts of Cochise County, according to the National Weather Service.
The steady rainfall began Wednesday afternoon and continued throughout most of the county on Thursday, gradually increasing the flow of the San Pedro River and creating flooding conditions that closed roads, including portions of Highway 92 east of Palominas Road.
Cochise County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Carol Capas said some property damage was caused by the slow-moving weather front, with two women being rescued from a house in Portal early Thursday morning. Members of the county’s Search and Rescue team were called out when a neighbor to the affected property summoned authorities and said the home was flooded by several feet of water.
Andy Haratyk, the operations manager for the Bisbee Public Works Department, said three retaining walls collapsed in the city, two caused by the Wednesday/Thursday storm, but the homes they were protecting were not in danger of of collapsing.
Two days before the storm event, another retaining wall in Bisbee collapsed, causing some some structural damage to a house, he said.
Haratyk said any more rain could cause landslides, which could impact the city’s residents.
On Fort Huachuca the two-day storm caused the Huachuca Wash to overflow with fast-moving water, requiring the fort to close one of the roads entering into the Bonnie Blink housing area.
Roaring water was rushing by the housing area and some historical office buildings at around 3 p.m. Thursday.
Area schools opened on schedule Thursday with Tombstone noting it had a two-hour delay in starting classes to ensure all the students arrived safely.
At 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Mary Lotti Copeland, superintendent of the Palominas School District, announced students would be sent home early due to the closing of portions of Highway 92 and the continuing storm conditions. Copeland said students from Palominas, Valley View and Coronado would be released from classes.
Brian Francis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Tucson, said while the rain is clearing out of Arizona, the agency is forecasting a 30 to 40 percent chance of precipitation for the rest of this week, and 20 to 30 percent chance for all of next week in Cochise County.
The rain has saturated the ground “and it will be moist enough for a slight chance of flooding,” he said.
The Sheriff’s department closed Hereford Bridge on Hereford Road east of Palominas Road early on Thursday morning.
Before noon, the continuing swell of the San Pedro River led to a decision by the state Department of Public Safety to close large portions of Highway 92, east from the Hereford area on to Bisbee.
“If people want to get to Bisbee, they will have to go on Highway 90,” Capas said at around 11:15 a.m. Thursday.
The flow of water at the Highway 92 bridge crossing the San Pedro River saw water flow over the banks and the height increase to almost 20 feet.
Emmet McGuire, who heads the United States Geological Services Arizona Water Science Field Office in Tucson, said the Wednesday/Thursday storm caused the river to flow at its second-fastest rate recorded since 1940, when it reached 22,000 cubic feet per second (cfs).
The two-day event measured at the Palominas Bridge was 18,100 cfs, he said, adding “that’s high.”
A cfs equals 7.5 gallons of water passing a specific point every second, meaning at one time the river at a monitoring station in Palominas almost reached the roadway, 20 feet above the river bed and 135,750 gallons of water flowed past a specific point every second.
Francis said that flow was strengthened by the amount of rain falling in the San Pedro River watershed in Mexico.
McGuire said after the rain diminished, the flow of the river did, too, as did the height of the river at the Highway 92 bridge.
A few miles north of the bridge the gauge at the Charleston Bridge measured a maximum flow of 3,000 cfs, or 22,500 gallons of water per second, and reached a height of a little more than seven feet.
One more measuring station, the Tombstone gauge, north of the Charleston Bridge device, measured about 2,200 cfs, or 16,500 gallons water per second, with the greatest height reaching nearly seven feet.
McGuire said the river’s bed at Charleston is narrower than the others, causing more flow and height, because wider areas cause water to spread, lowering the height the water reached.
Francis said the storm was continuing, but expected a dwindling rain pattern in the aftermath of Hurricane, now Tropical Storm Odile.
“It still maintains enough moisture to generate rain,” he said.
splash!!
For those of you who have no idea where in the heck Sierra Vista is (it is a common name), after some research I found this one is in AZ.
Oh golly I do hope those Immigrant Youth.....dont drown
Thanks for the update on Sierra Vista & Ft. Huachuca. Joe Bastardi of weatherbell.com has been talking about rain for New Mexico and Arizona for most all of September for several weeks. Check out his weekly forecaste at.
http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-september-20-2014
This is the 2nd or 3rd article from that web site that never identifies what state this is in.
Heck for only 10 miles or less it would have been in Mexico.
linky no worky.
Thanks -
The lack of 'Who-what-where and when' these days infuriates me. Those should be in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence.
also irritating, especially in this day of 'spell-check' are the now frequent misspellings.
Glad my writing days were 'way back when' people knew how to write and copy editors knew their job.
BTTT
Problem is that local news sources write for a local audience. The paper I work for has a style guide that omits the state for any community in our state.
It’s a tough issue, since local readers know what state it is in, but when local news breaks nationally, out of state readers will find hometown papers and when it’s shared on a site like this, basic info, like the paper’s city and state of origin may not be known.
Here is a rather obvious clue also. Don't you people read the articles anymore?
>>Mention of Ft. Huachuca should have given you a major clue.<<
I have been all over the country and have never heard of it.
I guess FReepers are supposed to have a complete mental database of Army Posts, Navy and Marine bases and their respective locations...?
It is FROM the Sierra Vista Herald. It’s not a bad assumption for the local paper to make that the people reading it know where they are.
Yes. You should know where all military bases are. Hahaha. There are other clues in the story like Cochise County and Bisbee. All places in Zona. Then there is the mention of the National Weather Service in TUCSON.
>> Then there is the mention of the National Weather Service in TUCSON.<<
I thought they meant Tuscon, Vermont ;)
...
nah, they got me — I think most people read the first few pphs to get the gist of the story. They call out AZ in the middle or so.
But still, it would be nice if they told us where out of the gate...
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