About 70 ultramarathon runners in Utah evacuated after being stranded by flooding
I keep thinking about the sheer strangeness of a tropical storm reaching Moab. That's high desert, slickrock country, a place where the annual rainfall is measured in single digits. And yet here comes Rachel, a remnant of a Pacific storm system, dumping enough water to turn canyon washes into raging rivers. The runners were stranded by the floodwaters. That's the kind of scenario race directors have nightmares about, and it happened in a landscape we usually associate with heat stroke.
What fascinates me is how this fits into a bigger pattern. Flash floods in desert regions have always been a danger, but the timing and intensity of these events are shifting. The Moab 240 is a test of human endurance, but it's also becoming a test of how well we can predict a rapidly changing atmosphere. I'd want to know how the race organizers make the call to pull the trigger on an evacuation, and whether they had any warning from weather models before the water started rising.
The fact that everyone got out safe is the headline, but the quieter story is about adaptation. Races like this are designed around historical weather data, and that data is becoming less reliable by the season. I suspect we'll see more of these rescues, and the desert won't be the only setting. The wilderness is getting wilder, and our plans need to catch up.