October 2018: The Wettest On Record For Arizona
Saturday's heavy rainfall makes this the wettest October on record for Arizona. That’s according to the National Weather Service.
More than 4.6 inches of rain has fallen this month. The previous record was 4.4 inches in 1972.
James Sawtelle is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix. He said several flood advisories were issued for different areas.
“We’ve had consistent reports of flash flooding at widespread locations across the valley, anywhere from the northwest valley to the southeast valley and several points in between," Sawtelle said.
As of 2 p.m. Saturday, more than an 1.5 inches of rain had fallen at Sky Harbor International Airport.
The Arizona Department of Transportation reported several crashes and slowed traffic due to standing water on the highways. Garin Groff with ADOT said the storm caused flooding on I-10 at 43rd avenue.
“It took about a half hour for the pumps to catch up and to take that water off the road so that traffic could get back to normal," Groff said. "But still there’s a lot of slow traffic in general around the whole freeway system just because the roads are so wet.”
Groff said western Arizona was hit especially hard. Traffic was stopped on state route 95 as washes flowed across the road.
