Valentino Petty splashed across the dining-room floor of her Kabob House restaurant near Leetsdale Drive and South Monaco Parkway in Denver and talked about the headache and expense of poor drainage.
“We pay our taxes, we pay our rent, we pay everything on time,” said Petty, whose Volvo was among a dozen flooded vehicles in the parking lot. “Then we get this, and this is our expense too.”
Thursday’s late-afternoon storm dumped more than an inch and a half of rain on a waterlogged city.
With five days to go, Denver already has recorded its third-wettest June on record.
As of 5 p.m. Thursday, the precipitation monitor at Denver International Airport had measured 4.35 inches for the month. The wettest June on record came in 1882, when 4.96 inches fell. The region needs less than four-tenths of an inch to beat the second-wettest June, 4.69 inches in 1967.
The chance of thunderstorms remains high through tonight as moisture from Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico continues to flow into the Front Range.
The afternoon deluge in east Denver flooded a dozen vehicles and a dozen businesses in Plaza Estaban, where Petty’s restaurant sits.
The rain came down so hard that no one dared rush to the car to move it, said Elina Zavyalova, who was shopping when the rain began. Hail collected up to the doors of her nearly new Honda CRV, she said as she waited for an insurance adjuster to put a value on the damage.
Pump trucks in the parking lot were slowly removing the water as customers with flooded cars watched in complete annoyance.
Anatoly Portnoy of the St. Petersburg Deli in the center moved his car to higher ground. “We’ve been here so long, I know the drill,” he said.
Todd Tedford, the shopping plaza’s manager, could not be reached by The Denver Post on Thursday evening. Shopowners said he referred them to the city.
Ann Williams, spokeswoman for Denver Public Works, said that by 4:30 p.m. street inlets simply could not take in all the water. As a result, several streets and parking lots flooded.
“We got a ton of rain in a short time period,” she said.
The American Red Cross responded to an apartment complex at 5300 Cherry Creek South Drive. The agency said four units at the complex were under 4 feet of water and 12 additional units were without power.
Fire dispatchers reported that heavy rains inundated southeast Denver and left 4 feet of water at South Monaco Parkway and East Evans Avenue. Firefighters at the scene said at least one car — carrying the driver and passengers — was stuck in the water.
