Flash Flood!

It was a spectacular and memorable day in Utah today.  After peeking at the Colorado River through fog and mist during the morning, by midafternoon, about 20 miles north of Hanksville, I saw the skies becoming ominous, but gorgeous!

Driving south toward my destination, I realized I was heading straight into the path of a massive thunderstorm.

The storm even had a semblance of a wall cloud, unusual for Utah.  Notice the wall of rain on the right side of the picture.

I finally encountered the slow moving wall of rain in Hanksville.  I was only in a downpour for a few minutes, but it obviously had been pouring for a long time just west of the town.  Fortunately the water running over highway 24 here was only 3-4 inches deep, so I and the other vehicles...even a bicycle! were able to continue.

A true flash flood!  The water is racing from right to left at high speed with great power, occasionally moving over the highway.  There is not usually a watercourse here.  This is all runoff from the surrounding hills.  I took a neat video of this but have not been able to figure out how to post it.  Blow up the pic to get an idea of the power of this water!

The Fremont River, racing downstream.  I arrived on the scene at precisely the right time...just after the heavy rain had stopped.  Thus the water was raging over the land, but I could get out of the car to photograph it.  Very lucky on my part.

The Fremont thunders over a diversion dam.

A waterfall rushes over a cliff on a normally dry mesa.  It's perhaps 50 feet high.

Right next to the first cascade, another drops a hundred feet or so.

Farther upstream, near Capitol Reef NP, the Fremont is still wild and red, but within its banks.  Blow up the pic and you'll notice that the vegetation on the far bank is ruffled and soggy about a foot and a half above the water...the river has obviously fallen quite a bit in the past few hours.  Looks like the park sustained significant flooding...there was drying sand across highway 24 in many places.  This was a truly awesome day for me.  Heavy rain in the desert is a rare, beautiful, and amazing spectacle!