Severe flooding hits Four Corners region, more expected through the weekend

Looking out a window on Friday afternoon, Devin Neeley saw light, puffy clouds and a blue sky in San Juan County, N.M. The county's public information officer for emergency management called it "surreal."

Meanwhile, brown rainwaters were flooding homes in low-lying areas of the county and forcing sewage into the San Juan River.

"[The sky] belies really the danger that is coming down the river in historic levels," Neeley says. "We have not seen flooding like this in generations."

Neeley says, emergency responders rescued people on their roofs after floodwater inundated their homes. The county is under an emergency declaration and residents in susceptible areas were told to evacuate Thursday afternoon.

"These are communities that have beautiful riverfront places to live," Neeley says. "And unfortunately, that's a problem today."

Rare, heavy rainfall started to hit the Four Corners region — which includes New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona — on Wednesday.

Since then, severe, brown-colored floodwaters have led to road closures, mandatory evacuations and emergency declarations across the four states.

Thick, brown floodwaters 

Areas of southern Utah, southwest Colorado, and the northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico were drenched with rain leading to rapidly rising floodwaters, Thursday and Friday.

In response to a post on X that showed brownish-red floodwaters in Hurricane, Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox, wrote on Thursday: "Our hearts are with the families whose homes and livelihoods have been impacted."

The southern Utah city issued an emergency declaration on Thursday after flooding damaged more than 100 homes and Rvs. People were seen leading horses to safety through ankle-deep water, in a video posted by the National Weather Service.

In Farmington, N.M., at the center of the devastation, Police Chief Steve Hebbe said at a press conference on Friday that "this is singular and this is real."

"So far, we have not had any deaths that is very fortunate, but this is not something that should be played with," Hebbe said.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared disaster emergencies for 11 counties. Polis also authorized the use of National Guard members to assist with rescue efforts in southwest Colorado.

The police department for the Navajo Nation, which spans across northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah, said on Thursday that authorities had rescued seven families, 30 people, from their flooded homes. The Hopi Tribe in northeastern Arizona declared a state of emergency on Thursday due to heavy rainfall damaging roads, bridges, homes and other infrastructure.

The Archuleta County Sheriff's office in Colorado warned residents to shelter in place Friday morning, and by the evening had issued an evacuation warning.

The flooding comes after extreme weather hit the Southwest throughout the week. Arizona saw baseball-sized hail and a possible tornado that injured at least one person Wednesday evening.

A record amount of rainfall 

The region's mountainous terrain is conducive to flooding. In August, intense flash flooding in the Grand Canyon led to multiple deaths.

Severe thunderstorm warnings started earlier in the week, says Kris Sanders, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, Colo. The remnants of Hurricane Trudy, which was active from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18, in the Pacific Ocean formed into a slow-moving low-pressure system that worked its way southwest.

Sanders says a lot of the storms weakened as they came through the region, but the heavy rain did not. Portions of southwest Colorado and southeast Utah saw two to four inches, whereas areas with higher elevations, like the San Juan Mountains, got up to six inches. This caused small creeks and streams and rivers to flood.

"Those rainfall amounts are records in themselves," Sanders says.

While the amount of rainfall is rare, he says, these storms typically happen in the region at this time of year. An event last year caused major flooding in the same spots, "like a carbon copy" of this year, Sanders says.

The threat is not over, he says, and thunderstorm watches are active in many of the same areas through Sunday.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, says the severe thunderstorms are fueled by the large amount of moisture in the air. He says that moisture comes from the record-warm waters off parts of the West Coast, which are driven by a strong El Niño event and a preexisting marine heat wave (which he attributes largely to human-caused climate change).

The flooding isn't a surprise, he says, pointing to a prediction he and others made in the spring — that if El Niño materialized according to forecasts, southwestern U.S. could see extreme precipitation events through October.

Now, "that is exactly what we've seen," he says, "because this isn't even the first event this fall."

Neeley, the public information officer in San Juan County, N.M., says his community will be on alert for more damage and safety risks throughout the weekend.

"People are concerned about their life and their welfare and their property," Neeley says. "This is going to be a long term impact to this community,"