Record Rivers in the Desert: Four Corners Flooding Holds Into Tuesday After Arizona's Emergency

The rain has stopped across much of the Southwest, but the rivers have not. Considerable river flooding — including major and record flooding — is ongoing or forecast across parts of central Arizona, southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico through Tuesday, November 3, the National Weather Service said, after heavy rain over the weekend of November 1 caused widespread flooding across all three states. On Monday, November 2, 11 rivers in Colorado and Arizona were either just coming out of major flood stage or about to enter it, according to the weather service office in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs declared a statewide state of emergency on Monday, November 2, as more than 10 rivers, creeks and washes in Arizona and southwest Colorado surged past major flood stage, several of them to new record crests. In Sedona, Oak Creek forced mandatory evacuations in zones along the creek, and crews used boats and helicopters to rescue about 40 people from their homes.

The newest warning came before dawn on Tuesday. At 2:05 a.m. MST, the National Weather Service in Flagstaff issued a flash flood warning for the Havasu Creek basin in Coconino County until 9:00 a.m. MST, after a gauge on Cataract Creek reported a rapid rise of 5.38 feet from heavy rain far upstream. The service said a flood wave was travelling through Cataract and Havasu creeks, with impacts at Supai estimated to begin between 9:00 a.m. and noon MST, and warned of life-threatening flash flooding at Supai, on the Havasupai Reservation, and at Little Navajo, Mooney and Beaver falls, as well as the Colorado River between river miles 156 and 158 — campers and hikers were told to move to higher ground immediately.

Elsewhere on Tuesday morning, the San Juan River at Shiprock, New Mexico, stood at 19.7 feet at 2:00 a.m. MST against a flood stage of 15.5 feet, and was expected to crest at 20.5 feet, a major flood, during the morning. The Animas River at Farmington was at 13.3 feet at 1:30 a.m., near its crest; the weather service notes that at 14 feet, water levels there approach those of the great flood of October 1911. In Arizona, the Little Colorado River at Winslow read 23.18 feet at 5:00 a.m. against a flood stage of 19 feet, still above moderate flood stage, with a rise above 25 feet — the level at which the levee is overtopped — possible during the day.

Two Arizona gauges rewrote their record books. The Little Colorado River at Woodruff broke its previous record by roughly six feet on November 2, in records dating back to the 1950s, the weather service said. The Gila River near Solomon rose 18 feet between the afternoon of November 1 and the morning of November 2, surpassing its previous historic high by six feet in a record dating to 2014; by 3:54 a.m. on Tuesday the Gila near Solomon was at 25.3 feet, a major flood, and at 24 feet homes and businesses flood on the north sides of Solomon, Safford and Thatcher.

In Colorado, flooding in Archuleta County was described by the weather service as catastrophic and historic. More than 3 inches of rain fell west of Pagosa Springs, triggering emergency evacuations ahead of major flooding on the San Juan River, which climbed past 16 feet; at one point the river had been predicted to crest at 21.9 feet, more than four feet above its previous record. Durango reported 4.3 inches of precipitation on November 1, with 1.8 to 2.6 inches around Cortez. Flood warnings covered the Mancos, Dolores, La Plata, Animas, Navajo and San Juan rivers, with rockfalls, mudslides and debris flows possible along burn scars and slot canyons.

The road network took the same water. State Route 89A through Oak Creek Canyon, between Sedona and Kachina Village, is closed after floodwaters pushed boulders and debris onto the road and washed out sections of pavement, with damaged guardrails and no reopening estimate. Sections of Interstate 40 around Flagstaff and further east were closed due to flooding, as were stretches of SR 87 near Winslow, US 191 at Rock Point and SR 288; Interstate 17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, closed for hours over the weekend, has reopened in both directions.

The practical advice from every agency involved is the same: check official road information before every leg — AZ511 in Arizona, COtrip in Colorado — and never drive through floodwater. The rain ending does not reopen a washed-out road, and AccuWeather noted that washouts and closures, and the cleanup that follows them, could continue into Tuesday even as drier weather returns for Election Day.

This was the second round of disastrous flooding in the Southwest in a couple of weeks, and it arrived while a strong El Nino continues to strengthen in the Pacific. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, wrote in his Weather West blog that back-to-back extreme-to-record-shattering rain events in the interior Southwest during one of the strongest El Nino events on record is, in his view, not a coincidence, pointing to unusually warm waters in the eastern subtropical Pacific, increased East Pacific tropical cyclone activity and a strengthened early-season subtropical jet.

The National Weather Service is not ready to say that. Lindsey Long, a meteorologist with NOAA's National Weather Service, said this week that forecasters cannot yet attribute the current weather patterns to the strengthening El Nino — attribution, she said, is something NOAA could examine later. For residents along the San Juan, the Animas and the Little Colorado, the argument is academic this week: what matters is that the gauges are at levels their record books, some a century old, have rarely or never held.

Flooding on this scale is exactly the kind of event that should be watched remotely, not in person. WorldEye's weather radar shows the storm system that did this as it moves east, the weather tracker follows the wider pattern, and the region's traffic cameras show road conditions on the corridors that remain open — the safe way to see what Oak Creek Canyon or the Flagstaff interchanges look like this morning without driving to them.

Several rivers are forecast to stay in flood through Tuesday and, on the San Juan toward Lake Powell, into Wednesday morning. If you are in the Four Corners, follow the National Weather Service and your county's emergency notices, obey evacuation orders, and treat every closed road as closed for a reason — in a desert that floods this rarely, the water is the record, and the record is still being written.