Floodwaters encompass trailers at the Fun Valley Family Resort campground and RV half in South Fork, Colo., early Friday, Oct. 23, 2026.

South Fork Fire Rescue/AP

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South Fork Fire Rescue/AP

Looking out a window on Friday afternoon, Devin Neeley saw mild, puffy clouds and a blue sky in San Juan County, N.M. The county’s public info officer for emergency administration called it “surreal.”

Meanwhile, brown rainwaters were flooding houses 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 individuals on their roofs after floodwater inundated their houses. The county is under an emergency declaration and residents in inclined areas were informed 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 began to hit the Four Corners area — which consists of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona — on Wednesday.

Since then, extreme, brown-colored floodwaters have led to street closures, necessary evacuations and emergency declarations across the 4 states.

Thick, brown floodwaters 

Areas of southern Utah, southwest Colorado, and the northern components of Arizona and New Mexico were drenched with rain main to quickly rising floodwaters, Thursday and Friday.

In response to a submit on X that confirmed 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.”

We are intently monitoring the flash flooding in Hurricane. Our hearts are with the households whose houses and livelihoods have been impacted.

Please comply with all evacuation orders and native emergency steerage. We’re grateful to the first responders working to preserve Utahns protected. https://t.co/8hDQ85T0Xz

— Governor Cox (@GovCox) October 22, 2026

The southern Utah metropolis issued an emergency declaration on Thursday after flooding broken more than 100 houses and Rvs. People were seen main horses to security through ankle-deep water, in a video posted by the National Weather Service.

In Farmington, N.M., at the heart of the devastation, Police Chief Steve Hebbe said at a press convention 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 catastrophe emergencies for 11 counties. Polis also licensed the use of National Guard members to help with rescue efforts in southwest Colorado.

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

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

The flooding comes after excessive climate hit the Southwest all through the week. Arizona saw baseball-sized hail and a attainable twister that injured at least one particular person Wednesday night.

A document quantity of rainfall 

The area’s mountainous terrain is conducive to flooding. In August, intense flash flooding in the Grand Canyon led to a number of deaths.

Severe thunderstorm warnings began 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 energetic from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18, in the Pacific Ocean fashioned into a slow-moving low-pressure system that labored its method southwest.

Sanders says a lot of the storms weakened as they came through the area, but the heavy rain did not. Portions of southwest Colorado and southeast Utah saw two to 4 inches, whereas areas with greater elevations, like the San Juan Mountains, got up to six inches. This brought about small creeks and streams and rivers to flood.

“Those rainfall amounts are records in themselves,” Sanders says.

While the quantity of rainfall is uncommon, he says, these storms usually occur in the area at this time of yr. An occasion last yr brought about main flooding in the same spots, “like a carbon copy” of this yr, Sanders says.

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

Daniel Swain, a local weather scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, says the extreme thunderstorms are fueled by the great amount of moisture in the air. He says that moisture comes from the record-warm waters off components of the West Coast, which are pushed by a robust El Niño occasion and a preexisting marine warmth wave (which he attributes largely to human-caused local weather change).

The flooding is not a shock, 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 excessive precipitation occasions 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 info officer in San Juan County, N.M., says his neighborhood will be on alert for more injury and security dangers all through 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,”