Four Corners Flood Watch Issued as Saturated Soil Meets More Rain After Record San Juan River Crest

A flood watch covers much of the Four Corners as of Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. The region is the meeting point of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. It is bracing for another round of showers and thunderstorms after rain that began Wednesday sent rivers surging, flooded homes and forced water rescues.

Local officials expect swollen rivers to keep receding. The ground is the problem.

"The soils are very saturated right now, so it's not going to take much rain for at least the small creeks and streams to overflow," said Kris Sanders, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Grand Junction, Colorado.

CBS News meteorologist Andrew Kozak said repeated heavy rain could flood roads, small streams, narrow canyons and burn scars. The rain is forecast to spread across the central and northern Plains Sunday night, then move toward the Upper Midwest on Monday and Tuesday.

San Juan County, New Mexico

The worst of it has hit San Juan County, New Mexico, around Farmington and Bloomfield. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Saturday that law enforcement had reported hundreds of water rescues between the two cities.

"Families in Bloomfield and Farmington spent the night on rooftops watching the river flood their homes, and our national guard and state police crews have been bringing them to safety," she said. She added that no deaths had been reported and promised state help with rebuilding once the water recedes.

The San Juan River in Farmington ran 2 feet above its previous record, set in 1909, on Friday.

County spokesperson Devin Neeley said the county has no official figures on damaged homes or the number of people evacuated. He said he was not aware of any loss of life.

"It's a pretty active disaster zone," Neeley said. "We're not on the downswing by any means."

Sheriff Shane Ferrari lost use of his own home. About 4 feet of water flooded it. He said the situation across the area was stable Sunday while he and other residents cleaned up.

Hazards after the water

Receding water has left its own problems. Neeley said the mud and silt are in many places contaminated with sewage because of failures at waste plants. Power outages still affect multiple areas, and he said it would likely be a few days before service returns for residents. Hundreds remained without power Sunday.

County Fire & Rescue Chief David Vega said at a news conference that water could also carry chemicals, and that gas and propane lines could be broken. Crews were checking evacuated neighborhoods for dead animals, downed power lines and other hazards.

Undersheriff Cory Tanner said officials are going house to house, a process that could take days.

Residents want to go home. Vega said as much. "The public is anxious to get back in. We recognize that. We're sympathetic to that," he said. "But I want the public to know there are still hazards out there."

Colorado and Utah

The flooding reaches well beyond New Mexico. The Colorado Department of Transportation said flow in the San Juan River rose significantly overnight, and the San Juan River Bridge in Colorado remained closed Sunday. In Pagosa Springs, video shared with CBS Colorado showed a house submerged to its roofline and chimney.

Resident Chris Mott, in another video of water rushing through a neighborhood, said of the sandbags: "It moved sandbags and everything. I'm sorry, buddy. I tried. I really tried. But this one was bigger than the last one."

Associated Press photos showed the Animas River closed in Durango, Colorado, on Saturday, Oct. 24, and flooding in Hurricane, Utah, last Thursday. Pickup trucks were submerged along Highway 160 in South Fork, Colorado, on Friday.

Two months of rain after drought

This flood is the latest in two months of on-and-off heavy rain across the region, driven by tropical moisture coming ashore from the Pacific. It follows months of drought. Deadly flooding has already struck the Grand Canyon and other parts of New Mexico in recent weeks.

Forecasters said El Niño, the natural and temporary warming of parts of the Pacific, was likely to blame for the latest storm's unusually heavy rainfall. "It's been more or less three or four days," said Anthony Brown, lead meteorologist at the weather service office in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. "It's pretty unusual."

The Guardian reported the damage as multi-million-dollar, but San Juan County has published no official damage estimate.

The county has yet to release counts of damaged homes and displaced residents. Door-to-door hazard checks in the evacuated neighborhoods could take days, and that work will decide when families can return. The flood watch will test whether saturated ground in the Four Corners can absorb another round of storms.