The summer monsoon in 2021 will not soon be forgotten by residents here at the time. Fountain Hills received record rainfall during the period with a couple of major storms and flooding.

On the night of Friday, Aug. 13, Anthony Scimeca was driving to his home in Fountain Hills when he came to where Ashbrook Wash crosses El Pueblo Boulevard. Scimeca recalls it was dark and hard to see the water level. He entered the wash and was swept downstream nearly a quarter mile before his car was stopped by a tree and debris.

“It took me down the wash like a rubber ball,” Scimeca said. “I was hitting all kinds of debris.”

He said a tree branch came through the windshield of his car and he was trapped for about three hours. He was yelling and using a flashlight to try and get someone’s attention.

According to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, they received a report of someone who had been trapped and brought out of the wash at about 12:30 a.m. that Saturday.

Scimeca’s car was not the only report of a vehicle swept off the road that night, just the most dramatic.

This summer, rainfall totals for that period reached or exceeded 10 inches in Fountain Hills nearly across the board. The Maricopa County Flood Control District maintains nine ALERT weather monitoring sites within town limits, and there are three additional outside of town that are watched with interest.

With the exception of the rain gauge at the ALERT site at Fountain Hills Fire Station #1 at Palisades Boulevard and Avenue of the Fountains, all the county sites recorded more than 10 inches of rain, with as much as 12.48 inches collected at the location near Adero Canyon Trailhead (identified by the county as Cloudburst Wash). The fire station received 9.73 inches. The Town of Fountain Hills reported 9.88 inches at Fountain Park over the monsoon period between June 15 and Sept. 30. That was the only other location aside from the fire station to report less than 10 inches within town limits.

Hesperus Dam, near Teepee Drive off Richwood Avenue, received 12.44 inches of rain this summer.

There were two multi-day monsoon systems that accounted for well over half of the seasonal rainfall. July 21-25 brought 2.61 inches as recorded at Fountain Park. From Aug. 11-18, there were 5.25 inches received, again at Fountain Park. Both of those left significant flood damage to streets and washes. There were also a number of homes reporting flood damage from the bloated washes.

Salt River Project, which manages water from the Salt and Verde river watersheds, also reported substantial runoff from the summer monsoon. This past summer the utility released water into the normally dry Salt River bed through the East Valley, something nearly unheard of during the monsoon months.

SRP also reported that at the end of the monsoon its four Salt River reservoirs are an overall 73% full, while the two reservoirs on the Verde River are 52% percent full making the overall SRP system 70% full going into the winter.