Four Corners Floodwaters Recede as Evacuations Stay in Place
Floodwaters in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest were receding on Sunday, Oct. 25, but evacuations remained in place and forecasters issued new flood watches for the area. The Four Corners is the point where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet.
Heavy rain began picking up on Wednesday, Oct. 21, and swollen rivers surged across the region. Severe flooding made roads impassable, and hundreds of people were rescued, some by helicopter. Others were stranded on rooftops as water rose.
In San Juan County, New Mexico, about 4 feet (1 meter) of water flooded the home of Sheriff Shane Ferrari. County spokesperson Devin Neeley said he was not aware of any loss of life from the flooding. He also said the county had no official figures yet on home damage or on the number of people evacuated. An Associated Press report put the number of people affected by flooding in and around a city of 46,000 near the Four Corners at about 2,000.
Further west, in Hurricane, Utah, flooding in the Gould Wash drainage channel lapped into and around around 80 homes with reddish-brown water. The city declared a state of emergency. In South Fork, Colorado, pickup trucks were submerged along Highway 160 on Friday, Oct. 23.
The floodwaters are leaving behind mud and silt, which the Guardian reported is contaminated with sewage because of failures at waste treatment plants. Power outages affected several areas of San Juan County on Sunday, and restoration was expected to take a few days.
The same report links the flooding to two months of intermittent heavy rain driven by tropical moisture coming ashore from the Pacific Ocean.
Weather forecasters have not finished issuing warnings. The National Weather Service placed a flood watch over parts of northern and western New Mexico, which was in effect from noon until midnight on Sunday. A separate watch covered the San Juan Mountains, the Animas River and San Juan River basins, and southeastern Utah, and it runs until 12 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 26, according to the agency's Grand Junction office. For eastern New Mexico, the agency forecast an additional 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of rain, with some localized totals of 2 to 3 inches. It warned that rainfall of more than 1 inch per hour could cause rapid runoff and flash flooding in north-central New Mexico.
