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.
I had to skim through it, too. I assumed it was Sierra Vista in Arizona before I reached the clues because it is monsoon season there. But unless you have lived in the region, you probably don’t know what monsoon season is.
>> But unless you have lived in the region, you probably don’t know what monsoon season is.<<
I grew up in Southern California. We had 4 seasons: Summer, Fire, Flood and Earthquake.
Sorry, you got it wrong. The 4 SoCal seasons are fire and flood, earthquake and riot. :-)
We lived in Bonnie Blink, that road was always underwater when it rained. And very slick.
Lousy way to run a desert.........
Our rain report.
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