Four Corners region faces more flood threats following days of heavy rain
A rain-soaked swath of the Southwest U.S. braced Sunday for another round of potentially heavy showers and thunderstorms after days of rain forced evacuations and water rescues.
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for much of the Four Corners — the meeting point of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah — even as local officials forecast further receding of swollen rivers that surged since rains picked up Wednesday.
Repeated torrential rain and storms could flood roads, small streams, narrow canyons and burn scars, according to CBS News meteorologist Andrew Kozak. The rain will expand across the central and northern Plains Sunday night before moving toward the Upper Midwest Monday and Tuesday.
The Colorado Department of Transportation said water flow levels in the San Juan River increased significantly overnight, and the San Juan River Bridge remains closed Sunday. Video shared with CBS Colorado shows a house in Pagosa Springs inundated with floodwaters. All that can be seen is a small piece of the roof and the chimney.
"I'm sorry, buddy. I tried. I really tried. But this one was bigger than the last one," Pagosa Springs resident Chris Mott said in another video of water rushing through a neighborhood. "It moved sandbags and everything."
About 4 feet of water flooded the home of San Juan County, New Mexico, Sheriff Shane Ferrari. He said the area's situation was stable Sunday, but he and other residents were trying to clean up and deal with damage.
San Juan County spokesperson Devin Neeley said the county did not have official numbers on damage to homes or the number of people evacuated, but he was not aware of any loss of life.
Neeley said the floodwaters were receding but left mud and silt, much of which has been contaminated with sewage because of failures at waste plants. There were still power outages affecting multiple areas, and it would likely be a few days until residents got their power back on.
"It's a pretty active disaster zone," he said. "We're not on the downswing by any means."
The flooding is just the latest from two months of on-and-off heavy rain caused by tropical moisture coming ashore from the Pacific. After months of drought, other recent deadly flooding struck the Grand Canyon and areas of New Mexico.
In:
Disaster response continues as some residents in southwest Colorado remain stranded due to flooding
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.