Late August in Las Vegas: Record Heat, Flooded Streets, and the Light at the End of the Tunnel

It's the last week of August, which in Las Vegas means we are officially in the home stretch. Not there yet — but close enough to start believing in it.

Wednesday afternoon, Harry Reid hit 110 degrees and broke a daily record that had been standing since 2001. Two days before that, a monsoon cell parked itself over Henderson and put water in the streets near Nevada State and Wagonwheel. That's late August in the valley. An extreme heat warning and a flash flood in the same week, and nobody around here even blinks.



Everybody who's been here a few years ends up on the same schedule in August, whether they planned it or not.

You're outside before 9 or you're not outside. That's the whole rule. Trails, dog walk, yard work, car wash — all of it happens in that early window or it doesn't happen. By ten the pavement is hot enough that you should be checking it with the back of your hand before you take a dog out on it. If it's too hot for five seconds on your palm, it's too hot for paws.

Then the middle of the day disappears. You run errands in whatever order keeps you closest to covered parking. You park facing away from the sun so the steering wheel is survivable. You keep a towel on the seat. You accept that the pool is now roughly the temperature of a warm bath and does not actually cool you off.

And then around 4 or 5 the sky starts doing something. Which brings me to the part that people who moved here from somewhere else consistently underestimate.



Storms build fast in the afternoon this time of year, and the valley does not absorb water. It moves it. A wash that has been bone dry since March can be running four feet deep twenty minutes after a storm that's happening five miles away from where you're standing.

Two things, and I'll get off the soapbox: don't drive into standing water, and don't hang out in a wash because it looks like a nice shaded trail. Every year the valley loses somebody to a flooded intersection they thought was six inches deep.

The upside is that a monsoon evening here is genuinely one of the best things about living in this city. The whole sky goes purple, you get lightning out over the mountains with no thunder because it's so far away, and the creosote smells like rain about ten minutes before any actually falls. People pay money for candles that smell like that. We just get it.



The kids went back August 10, so the 7:45 school zone crawl is back and the valley feels populated again. The Aces are still playing downtown. The Raiders wrap up preseason this week and the real thing starts right after. And T-Mobile has the first-ever Players Era Volleyball Showcase this weekend — Nebraska, Texas, TCU, and our own UNLV, all indoors and air conditioned, which is the only kind of sporting event I'm willing to discuss in August.

If you need out of the heat entirely, Mount Charleston is still the best-kept non-secret in Southern Nevada. Forty-five minutes from most of the valley and twenty-plus degrees cooler at the top. You can leave a 108-degree house and eat lunch in the pines in the time it takes to drive to the Strip on a bad traffic day.



Here's the thing that gets locals through the last stretch: sunset is already coming earlier, and it keeps sliding. By late September the evenings start to hold. By October, patios reopen, Red Rock stops being a survival exercise, and this becomes the best place in the country to live for about seven straight months.

That's the deal we all made. Eight weeks of misery in exchange for a winter where you're hiking in a long-sleeve shirt in January. Anybody who's been here a while will tell you it's worth it, usually while sitting in a car with the AC on max, waiting for the steering wheel to cool down.

Six more weeks. We're going to make it.