Over 20 trillion gallons of rain fell on the Four Corners states and Nevada in two weeks

Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated that more than 20 trillion gallons of rain fell on Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada over two weeks. The first four make up the Four Corners states, and Nevada, just to the west, was folded into the same tally.

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The number is a volume estimate spread over a huge area rather than a single gauge reading, and it surfaced as skies finally started to clear on Nov. 2.

Converted out of gallons, the total comes to roughly 61 million acre-feet of water, a unit more familiar in Western reservoir management. Since the calculation is a regional sum and not a measurement at any one place, it says little about which canyon or town took the worst of it. The gauge records and rescue accounts do that job.

Two weeks of rain from Oct. 21 to Nov. 2

The AP carried Maue’s calculation in a story on the floodwaters swamping the Southwest, noting that hundreds of people had been evacuated and swift-water teams stayed busy even as the weather cleared. The first round of heavy rain began Wednesday, Oct. 21, when remnants of Hurricane Trudy from Oct. 15 to 18 fed a slow-moving low pressure system over the region, according to NPR reporting republished by OPB.

Totals in that first wave ran 2 to 4 inches across southwest Colorado and southeast Utah and up to 6 inches in the San Juan Mountains. Kris Sanders, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Grand Junction, Colorado, said the amounts were records. Devin Neeley, the public information officer for San Juan County, New Mexico, said the county had not seen flooding like it in generations, and Farmington’s police chief, Steve Hebbe, called the event singular and real. Navajo Nation police pulled seven families, 30 people, from flooded homes. In Hurricane, Utah, flash flooding damaged more than 100 homes and RVs, and floodwater surrounded trailers at a campground in South Fork, Colorado.

Pagosa Springs and the 1911 benchmark on the San Juan River

In Pagosa Springs, a Colorado town of about 2,000, the San Juan River reached 16.81 feet on Sunday, roughly a foot below the 1911 flood that nearly wiped the community off the map. Downtown streets went under before the river receded Monday. A house floated downstream and slammed into a pedestrian bridge, and part of a road bridge west of town collapsed. Dozens of people were rescued, some by helicopter, and Sheriff’s office spokesperson Vicki Shaffer said searches for stranded residents would continue. An evacuation order lifted after an earlier storm had been reimposed on Saturday.

The Colorado Department of Transportation reopened several closed roads and bridges late Monday, though the evacuation orders stayed in place.

Fifteen record crests and a village cut off at Chama

Jonathan Erdman, a senior meteorologist at weather.com, laid out the river record in his Nov. 3 recap. Fifteen gauges in Arizona, southern Colorado and western New Mexico set all-time flood crest records, and eight more locations, among them the San Juan River at Farmington and Shiprock, New Mexico, topped their previous marks for the second time in about ten days. The first crest wave came Oct. 23 and 24. Pagosa Springs recorded its two highest crests since 1911 on Oct. 23 and Nov. 1. An atmospheric river, a deep plume of moisture at record levels for the season, did most of the work.

New Mexico’s share of the damage included evacuations along the San Juan River, which could crest again Tuesday through Wednesday, and the village of Chama, evacuated and sealed off by road closures. In Durango, Colorado, residents along the Animas River left their homes, and Police Chief Brice Current said many people were still stranded. About 200 neighbors turned out with shovels and skid steers to dig mud out of one Durango neighborhood.

Warm Pacific water and the request for federal aid

The AP tied the pattern to El Niño and warming Pacific waters, and the Climate Prediction Center’s monthly ENSO discussion still carries an El Niño Advisory for the season ahead.

Politics and logistics collided on Election Day. Colorado and Utah arranged alternative voting plans for people who were evacuated or stranded, and voters in hard-hit San Juan County, Utah, can cast ballots electronically because some may not reach polling places. Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, declared a statewide emergency on Monday.

Both the Colorado and New Mexico governors want a presidential major disaster declaration, which would open federal funding for repairs that the AP says could take weeks. No decision had been reported by the evening of Nov. 3, and the 20 trillion gallon figure itself remains one analyst’s arithmetic. Farmington’s police chief, Steve Hebbe, sat for an interview with NPR’s Here & Now on Oct. 28 about how the city was coping, and the repair bills that follow such weeks are the kind a disaster declaration is meant to offset.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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