A thunderstorm dumped nearly four inches of water in Tooele within a few hours, flooding some basements and cutting power to 3,000 houses in the area Monday.

Tooele saw the greatest amount of rain from a brief but intense storm that drenched northern Utah on Monday morning. The National Weather Service reported 3.71 inches in Tooele, 1.58 inches in South Ogden, .87 inches in Farmington, .50 inches in Springville, and .30 inches in Salt Lake City.

The storm "just happened to be focused over Tooele," said Pete Wilensky, a lead forecaster for the service. "That county happened to get hit with a couple of particularly heavy cores."

In Utah County, marble-size hail pelted Saratoga Springs, while the rain caused some localized flooding in Provo, Orem and Springville.

Volunteers scrambled to sandbag homes along 700 South in Tooele, which was serving as the de facto waterway for spring runoff that overflowed from Settlement Canyon reservoir. County spokesman Wade Mathews said houses throughout the city and county had water in their basements, with as much as 30 inches reported in one home and sewage backing up in others.

"It was a flash flood, basically, like you would experience in a canyon somewhere," Mathews said. "The storm burst hit us so quickly that it caught a lot of residents off guard. The damage was done before we could even start loading up sandbags."

The lightning that accompanied the Memorial Day drencher damaged equipment at a substation in Stansbury Park and knocked out power to 3,000 houses. All had their power back Monday afternoon, a Utah Power spokeswoman said.

Several hundred volunteers filled and placed sandbags. Tooele Mayor Charlie Roberts called them indispensable.

"Everyone was working as hard as they could," Roberts said. "We would have had a mile-and-a-half of homes on both sides of 700 South that would have been potentially overrun with the flood waters," without the volunteers.

Intense rain washed out parts of the Union Pacific track north of Tooele, but the company rerouted trains over other track in Provo, said John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific. Train cars along that line typically carry imported goods ranging from computers to clothes, but delivery would not be delayed, Bromley said.

The heavy rain also caused problems in southeast Draper, where residents temporarily evacuated three houses because a storm drain backed up. One of the homes took in about four feet of water, an estimated $60,000 or more in damage, said Capt. Gaylord Scott of the Unified Fire Authority.