More rain in forecast after overnight thunderstorms douse Phoenix area

PHOENIX – Keep that umbrella handy.

More rain is in the forecast for Friday in the wake of widespread overnight thunderstorms that flooded metro Phoenix roadways.

“The storms that we just experienced overnight are going to slowly drift north and east of Phoenix through this morning,” Matt Salerno of the National Weather Service (NWS) in Phoenix told KTAR News 92.3 FM early Friday.

“However, we do expect an additional round this afternoon and this evening. We have a 50% chance for seeing thunderstorms in Phoenix again today.”

The monsoon storms that rolled through the Valley on Thursday night triggered weather warnings and flooded some roadways.

“We did get a few reports in of some flash flooding with standing water, curb-to-curb flooding,” Salerno said. “We also saw that there was an accident up on I-17 near Happy Valley Road, where there was about 2 feet of water on the interstate.”

In addition, strong winds reportedly toppled palo verde trees in the Scottsdale area, Salerno said.

“And those can go down usually when you see wind gusts around 50 miles per hour, maybe locally up to 60 miles per hour,” he said.

Thursday night’s rainfall was more extensive than the previous night, when the action was limited to parts of south, central and north Phoenix. Most areas received from 0.1 to 0.5 inches of rain from the latest round of storms.

“But there were some localized spots that received over an inch, such as up near north Scottsdale, Paradise Valley area, and then also down south toward Maricopa,” Salerno said.

Did latest monsoon storms produce any rain at Sky Harbor?

One spot that stayed dry was Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which the NWS uses for the city’s officials records.

The airport hasn’t seen measurable rain since 0.16 inches fell on July 2. That also was Phoenix’s only official precipitation since the start of the monsoon season on June 15.

“We’ve been in a pretty bad drought regionwide ever since the beginning of this year, really,” Salerno said. “And this is really the first substantial widespread rain that we’ve seen in some time.”

What does the metro Phoenix weekend forecast say?

The Valley is expected to dry out again after Friday, Salerno said.

“For the most part, after today, it looks like the rain activity is going to be ending for this weekend,” he said. “However, there’s still going to be some isolated storms … mainly across the high terrain areas through this weekend.”

Meanwhile, temperatures are expected to stay near normal through the weekend before rising again, with highs reaching 110 degrees by the middle of next week.

“But maybe by the end of next week into the following weekend, we could be seeing some additional rain chances here in the desert,” Salerno said.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Ginia Mcfarland contributed to this report.

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