Las Vegas picked up 1.08 inches of rain on Oct. 11, the wettest Oct. 11 in the city’s weather records, according to a preliminary National Weather Service report. The old mark for that calendar date was 0.78 inches, set in 2012. The water came from the remnants of Rachel, a storm that lost its tropical character as it moved into Southern California and then pushed east across the desert Southwest.
Las Vegas was not alone. Four other stations in the same forecast area also beat their daily records that Sunday: Kingman, Arizona, with 0.95 inches; Barstow-Daggett, California, with 0.60 inches; Desert Rock-Mercury, Nevada, with 1.45 inches; and Death Valley, California, with 0.18 inches. Each of them beat a record that had stood for years, and in the case of Barstow-Daggett for nearly seventy.
Five stations, five daily records
The figures come from a record event report issued by the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas at 1:40 a.m. Pacific time on Monday, Oct. 12. It lists each station’s new value beside the old one and the year it was set. Las Vegas, with records beginning in 1937, went from 0.78 inches in 2012 to 1.08. Kingman, whose records start in 1901, jumped from 0.29 inches in 2012 to 0.95, more than triple the previous best for the date.
The biggest gaps sit in the smaller desert stations. Barstow-Daggett had held a record of just 0.08 inches since 1957 and recorded 0.60 inches, which is seven and a half times the old figure. Desert Rock-Mercury, in southern Nevada with records beginning in 1978, reached 1.45 inches against a 0.57-inch record from 2012, and Death Valley, where records begin in 1911, logged 0.18 inches against 0.10. Each of the five readings is a single day’s worth of rain, which makes the margins over the old records, not just the new totals, the notable part of the report.
An all-time October tie in Associated Press reporting
An Associated Press account of the storm, carried by News4JAX, described Las Vegas as tying its all-time daily October rainfall record with the same 1.08 inches, measured through Sunday morning, and said the last time the city saw that much rain in one October day was 1947. The wire story also noted that video showed water rushing through a street near the Las Vegas Strip. The same text ran on ABC News and in a regional business paper.
Those two framings fit together without contradiction. The weather service report is about one date on the calendar, Oct. 11, and the 2012 record that fell. The wire copy compares the total with the heaviest single October day in the city’s history. A storm can set a record for a date and also match the monthly standard, and here it did both, though the weather service text itself does not draw the 1947 comparison.
Flood watches after the rain
Rachel did not stop at Nevada. According to the AP, the system tore apart a historic boardwalk and damaged coastal homes in Long Beach, California, forcing some residents to evacuate, and flooding stranded dozens of runners and volunteers in the Moab 240 ultramarathon in Utah, who were evacuated on Sunday. On Monday the weather service issued flood watches for parts of Utah, southeast Idaho and northern and central Arizona, including the Grand Canyon.
The storm’s worst human toll came south of the border. The same AP account reported that floodwaters in Ensenada, in Baja California, swept away vehicles and damaged homes, that at least four people died in the state from the post-tropical cyclone, and that six more were missing, including a father and son from San Felipe who had gone fishing on Saturday. The military used helicopters to rescue 32 people from a ranch in Ensenada, and Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila said about 14,000 federal and state personnel were deployed across Baja California.
Andrew Orrison, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the AP that localized flash flooding remained a risk on Monday, while adding that the worst of what Rachel brought had already passed. The extra rain in the forecast, he said, came from a separate weather system and was expected to end by Wednesday. For the mid-Atlantic and Southeast he described the coming days as “a little summerish.”
Preliminary numbers awaiting National Weather Service review
Every number above carries a caveat printed on the report itself: the information is preliminary and subject to final review. Daily record reports are produced quickly from station observations so forecasters and the public can see how a storm compared with history, and they can change once quality control is finished. Readers who need certified values, for insurance, engineering or legal purposes, are directed to the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, which keeps the official climate archive.
Until that review is done, the safest reading is the narrow one. Five desert stations from Nevada to California set daily rainfall records on Oct. 11, 2026, and Las Vegas led the list with 1.08 inches against 0.78 inches in 2012. Whether any of those figures is adjusted will be visible in the final data.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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