Wet but not too wild, Tropical Storm Nora blew through the desert Southwest without the damage that was feared.
"We can breathe a sigh of relief," said Ralph Ogden, sheriff in Yuma County, which was at ground zero Thursday as the former hurricane crossed into the United States after hopping Mexico's Baja Peninsula.Downgraded Thursday night to a tropical depression after winds fell below 39 mph, the storm then turned eastward toward the mountains of north-central Arizona.
There it dumped nearly 5 inches of rain on the small rural community of Bagdad, about 50 miles west of Prescott, while speeding further inland. Flood water reached a depth of 6 inches in Aguila, west of Phoenix, the National Weather Service said.
Nora was still at tropical storm strength when its center passed over Yuma, where 2.3 inches of rain fell Thursday. The strongest wind gust was 54 mph.
While that's enough in an area that gets an average of 3.6 inches of rain a year, it is far better than forecasters' warnings that Nora could dump up to 10 inches.
"I lived many years in Florida, and this is nothing," said Norm Lucken, who retired to Yuma two months ago.
Still, in Somerton, about 14 miles to the south, the water got to about 3 feet, forcing the evacuation of about 750 residents from two mobile home parks. The residents were back in their homes by nightfall.
An already soggy southern Utah was soaked with rain ranging from less than an inch to more than 2 inches as the remnant of Nora moved northward.
Residents had stockpiled tens of thousands of sandbags in preparation for floods in southern Utah, but they weren't needed because the rain was steady and not a heavy downpour.
"We just prepared well for it, and we had no problems," said Leslie Nelson, a dispatcher for Kane County in southern Utah.
Kanab, the county seat, had 1.56 inches of rain, bringing September's total to 8.92 inches, the wettest month ever, said Bill Alder, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City.