Las Vegas faces only slight chance of thunderstorms Thursday

By Pashtana Usufzy

Published Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014 | 3:51 p.m.

Updated Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014 | 10:45 p.m.

After a week of grim weather predictions, it seems valley residents shouldn’t head out to buy new rain jackets just yet.

The flash flood watch issued for Clark County for Wednesday and Thursday was canceled as of about 5:30 p.m.

The chance of showers and thunderstorms simply didn’t merit a watch, National Weather Service meteorologist Andrew Gorelow said.

“It’s so slight the coverage isn’t really enough for a watch for a widespread area,” he said.

The Las Vegas Valley hadn't received any rain as of late Wednesday, according to the weather service.

The chance of rain should drop by about 15 to 20 percent by Thursday morning and 10 percent or less by the afternoon, meteorologist Reid Wolcott said.

The forecast is much different — and drier — than what meteorologists predicted just days ago.

“We really thought we were going to get smacked by all of the moisture from Tropical Storm Odile,” Wolcott said.

Instead, much of the rain is beginning to travel from Mexico toward southeastern Arizona, he said.

An upper-level trough along the Pacific Northwest coast is pushing south and bringing drier air to the Las Vegas Valley, Wolcott said.

Meanwhile in Arizona, Tucson residents anticipating a storm Wednesday were waiting a bit longer for the rain to arrive.

"Don't be lulled into thinking just because we didn't get rain right now, that it's not coming," said John Brost, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Tucson. "It's still heading this way, it's just still south of the border."

The storm was expected to hit the area by late Wednesday and last into the night, Brost said.

People lined up in bumper-to-bumper traffic and scooped sand into trash and canvas tote bags Wednesday as rain from a weakened Pacific storm began to fall on Arizona.

It's the second blast of hurricane-related weather to hit the desert region in the past two weeks — the result of an especially active Pacific storm season. Odile was once a Category 3 Hurricane, but it was downgraded to a tropical depression by the time rain started falling in Arizona.

The Tucson and Phoenix areas received less than the expected precipitation Wednesday, and no rain was falling in either location by mid-afternoon. But the forecast still calls for more precipitation to arrive in the next day, with up to 5 inches of rain predicted for Tucson.

Fearful of widespread flooding, people across Arizona rushed to fill up sandbags to fortify their homes. Traffic backed up at two parks in Tucson where they were being given out. The mayor of the border city of Nogales used his pickup truck to deliver sandbags to residents.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.