Though short-lived, monsoon rains Saturday and Sunday wreaked havoc on parts of Southern Utah while helping the area get back on track as far as annual rainfall goes.

Storms produced flooding across the county, ripped trees out of the ground, and in the case of Dixie High School, damaged athletic facilities like the football fields and tennis court area.

On Saturday some flooding hit the streets of the center of Hurricane, Washington City and elsewhere while a sudden deluge of rain and strong winds tore through downtown St. George and ripped off the roof of the dugout at the Dixie High tennis courts. The storm also destroyed some of the fencing and trees around the football field and ripped signs off the football scoreboard. One of those signs was thrown by the wind to the opposite end of the field.

“There was some significant damage,” Steve Dunham, the communication and public relations director for the Washington County School District, told St. George News on Monday.

Dunham shared security camera footage with that showed the sudden blast of the destructive monsoonal downpour as high winds stormed through Dixie High’s athletic fields. The blast of wind and rain temporarily blinded a part of the camera feeds as the storm raged on through and then quickly dissipated.

Damage to the football field is being cleared and repaired as soon as possible with the goal of getting everything back on track for the next home game, Dunham said.

During the weekend storms, various trees were also uprooted, David Cordero, a spokesman for the city of St. George, said. Aside from that, the impact to city infrastructure was minimal, he said.

Accompanying the storms were warnings of flash flooding and some flooded roads across the county. Among them was a segment of Airport Parkway, the primary road in and out of the St. George Regional Airport. Similar flooding occurred in the same area a year ago. No other issues of note related to the storms were reported by city officials.

Booming cracks of thunder and flashes of lighting also came with the storms. One one of those electric bolts hit a St. George home on Saturday and triggered a fire in the attic of a home on 540 North. While there was some property damage to the home, no one was injured in connection with the resulting fire.

While they left some destruction and frustration in their wake this weekend, the monsoonal rains from the weekend of Aug 11 left visitors to Snow Canyon State Park and the Ivins area treated with a rare sight of waterfalls running down from the cliff-tops. This scene was shared with St. George News by reader Bret Berger who filled some of those waterfalls.

Monsoon rains in July and August have helped the St. George area “get back on track” as far as average annual rainfall is concerned, Hayden Mahan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, told St. George News.

The average rainfall for the St. George area is around 10 inches a year, Mahan said. Since the start of the year, St. George is up to around 7 inches, thanks to the recent storms.

“We’re trending right around where we should be,” Mahan said.

The monsoon season for the region was originally “a little late to the party,” Mahan added, noting that following the wet months of January, February and March, April through June had little in the way of measurable rainfall and was very dry.

A lack of monsoonal rains can contributes to higher temperatures during the summer, though it is just one of many factors at play, Mahan said. Conversely, the monsoons can help drop the temperatures a little when they roll though, he said.

The monsoon season is expected to start dropping off in September. As for how the remainder of the season looks, the NWS’ Climate Prediction Center has projected that there is an equal chance of less than or more than average prediction.

There is a 50% chance of additional rainfall and thunderstorms happening this Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

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