In most areas water has receded, leaving behind a dense layer of mud and gravel. 'The noise from some of the rocks coming down the mountain was just incredible,' he said in a phone interview Friday afternoon. 'Entire trees and boulders were washing down,' said John Sirlin, a photographer for an Arizona-based adventure company who witnessed the flooding as he perched on a hillside boulder, where he was trying to take pictures of lightning as the storm approached. Park employees also stranded by the closed roads were continuing to shelter in place, except for emergencies, officials said. Highway 190 - a main artery through the park - is expected to reopen between Furnace Creek and Pahrump, Nevada, by Tuesday, officials said. The flooding 'cut off access to and from Death Valley, just washing out roads and producing a lot of debris,' Adair said. Friday, said John Adair, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas. Most of the rain - just over an inch - came in an epic downpour between 6 a.m. Carpet from those rooms was later ripped out. While their room was spared, five or six other rooms at the hotel were flooded. 'People around me were saying they had never seen anything this bad before - and they have worked here for a while,' Jones said. For about two hours, they wondered whether they would get flooded.

'I hadn't seen water rising that fast in my life.'įearful the water would come into their ground-floor room, Jones and her friends put their luggage on beds and used towels at the bottom of doorways to keep water from streaming in.

By the time she returned, rapidly pooling water had reached the room's doorway. Nikki Jones, a restaurant worker who is living in a hotel with fellow employees, said rain was falling when she left for breakfast Friday morning. Since 1936, the only single day with more rain was April 15, 1988, when 1.47 inches (3.73 centimeters) fell, park officials said. National Park Service via AP Highway 190 is closed due to flash flooding in Death Valley National Park on Friday.

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