'Once-in-a-Generation' Flooding Hits the Four Corners: Four States Order Evacuations and Rooftop Rescues as Warnings Run Through the Weekend
Rare, heavy rainfall since Wednesday, October 21, has brought severe flooding to the Four Corners region — where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona meet — forcing evacuations and emergency declarations across four states, sending rescue crews to rooftops, and leaving river levels at historic highs. As of briefings on Friday afternoon, October 23, no deaths had been reported, but forecasters warned the threat would last through the weekend.
In San Juan County, New Mexico, the hardest-hit area, an emergency declaration is in effect and residents of low-lying areas were told to evacuate beginning Thursday afternoon, as brown floodwaters inundated homes and forced sewage into the San Juan River. "We have not seen flooding like this in generations," Devin Neeley, the county's public information officer for emergency management, said Friday afternoon, adding that the community would remain on alert all weekend: "This is going to be a long term impact to this community." The Associated Press reported that about 600 people in the Farmington area had been ordered to evacuate, with McGee Park open as a shelter. Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said at a Friday press conference: "This is a once-in-a-generation time — this is singular and this is real. So far, we have not had any deaths, that is very fortunate, but this is not anything that should be played with."
The southern Utah city of Hurricane declared an emergency on Thursday after flooding damaged more than 100 homes and recreational vehicles, and Governor Spencer Cox urged residents on social media to follow evacuation orders. In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis declared disaster emergencies for 11 counties and authorized National Guard members to assist rescue efforts in the southwest of the state. Navajo Nation police said authorities had rescued seven families — 30 people — from their flooded homes, and the Hopi Tribe in northeastern Arizona declared a state of emergency on Thursday, citing damage to roads, bridges, homes and other infrastructure. The Archuleta County Sheriff's Office in Colorado told residents to shelter in place on Friday morning and issued an evacuation warning by the evening.
Kris Sanders, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Grand Junction, Colorado, said southwest Colorado and southeast Utah received two to four inches of rain, with up to six inches in higher elevations such as the San Juan Mountains: "Those rainfall amounts are records in themselves." He said the system grew out of the remnants of Hurricane Trudy, active in the Pacific from October 15 to 18, which became a slow-moving low-pressure system over the Southwest; thunderstorm watches remain active in many of the same areas through Sunday. Arizona also saw baseball-sized hail and a possible tornado on Wednesday evening that injured at least one person. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, said the storms were fueled by moisture from record-warm waters off parts of the West Coast, driven by a strong El Niño event and a preexisting marine heat wave; he and others had predicted in the spring that if El Niño materialized as forecast, the Southwest could see extreme precipitation events through October: "Now, that is exactly what we've seen."
(GSM, from NPR, October 23, and Associated Press reporting)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Farmington 一带圣胡安河与阿尼马斯河交汇处航拍，资料图。照片：Dicklyon，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons
