Monday 2 November 2026
Pagosa Springs braces for the San Juan River to pass its 1911 record as flash floods force evacuations across Colorado and Arizona
Heavy rain falling on ground already soaked by last week's storms forced mandatory evacuations across the Southwest on Sunday. In Pagosa Springs, Colorado, officials warned of catastrophic flooding as the San Juan River was forecast to crest above 20 feet late Sunday night, past the 17.8 feet it reached in the 1911 flood that wiped out most of the town. The river stood at about 14 feet by sundown on Sunday, roads in and out of town were closed, and sewage had been discharged into the river. In Flagstaff, Arizona, police were searching for a man who slipped into fast moving floodwater and did not resurface.
Pagosa Springs is a town of more than 2,000 people in the San Juan Mountains, known for its hot springs and the ski area above it. On Sunday the Archuleta County Sheriff's Office told everyone in the low ground along the San Juan, Rio Blanco, Navajo and Piedra rivers to get to a shelter set up at a local church, and closed the highway into town to inbound traffic. One forecast put the crest at 21.87 feet, as of Sunday, which would stand about four feet above the 1911 record. The sheriff's office put it more plainly: the river was expected to rise nearly two feet above the level that destroyed most of the town 115 years ago. Downtown was evacuated, and shop owners described street flooding by afternoon. The same river flooded the town only a week ago.
The water was not only in Archuleta County. La Plata County closed every county road for a time on Sunday afternoon, and classes in Durango were canceled. Flood warnings around Pagosa Springs run until 7 p.m. on Monday.
Arizona took the same storm. Rain fell nearly without stopping in Flagstaff on Sunday, flooding roads and overwhelming storm drains, and police said a man slipped into fast moving water and was not seen resurfacing. In Sedona, officials ordered people along Oak Creek out of their homes as the water rose and trapped residents inside. Tucson fire crews pulled a woman from a car stuck in a flooded wash. The White Mountain Apache Tribe issued evacuation orders in east central Arizona, and mandatory evacuations were also in force in parts of northern New Mexico.
Forecasters tied the storm to an atmospheric river pulling tropical moisture from near Hawaii, the pattern called the Pineapple Express. A Tucson meteorologist said Arizona was getting two to three months of rain in a few days, on top of the two to five inches that fell across the region the week before. The National Weather Service held flood watches and warnings over nearly all of Arizona and parts of southern Utah, southwestern Colorado, western New Mexico and southern Nevada, with the rain expected to last through Monday.
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