Thanks to Hilary, you can keep your sprinklers off this week
The rain from Tropical Storm Hilary may be all but over for Southern Nevada, but you can still keep your sprinklers off for a few more days to save yourself — and the valley — a little extra water.
Storms that pushed into the region over the weekend dropped enough water across the Las Vegas Valley that homeowners should be able to keep their sprinkler systems off until next weekend, according to Southern Nevada Water Authority spokesman Bronson Mack.
“We are advising property owners to keep irrigation systems off through this week,” Mack said in an email Monday. “Depending on the temps going forward, we expect significant soil moisture to continue this week, which means we can all cut our watering and reduce usage. Normal watering can resume this weekend.”
Outdoor irrigation is the largest consumer of Colorado River water in Southern Nevada, where 90 percent of the water comes from Lake Mead.
The official rainfall totals from Hilary measured at Harry Reid International Airport for Saturday and Sunday came in at 0.55 inches, National Weather Service meteorologist Morgan Stessman said. The rain that came Friday, which Stessman said was more monsoonal in nature than from Hilary, measured at 0.3 inches.
Some of the areas surrounding Las Vegas saw far more precipitation over the weekend. Mount Charleston, for example, saw as much as 5 to 6 inches of rain just in the past 24 hours, leading to washed-out roads, power outages and an advisory for residents living on the mountain to boil their water before using it after the storm damaged the local water system.
But to put the valley’s recent rainfall into perspective: the three-day total of 0.85 inches nearly matched the 1.03 inches of rainfall the valley gets during the entire average monsoon season that runs from mid-June through September, Stessman said.
Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com.