A rain-soaked swath of the Southwest U.S. braced Sunday for another round of potentially heavy showers and thunderstorms after days of rain forced evacuations and water rescues.
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for much of the Four Corners — the meeting point of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. The area has experienced unusually heavy rain since Wednesday that caused rivers to surge, flooding homes and forcing water rescues.
Repeated torrential rain and storms could flood more roads, small streams, narrow canyons and burn scars, according to CBS News meteorologist Andrew Kozak. The rain will expand across the central and northern Plains Sunday night before moving toward the Upper Midwest Monday and Tuesday.
The Colorado Department of Transportation said water flow levels in the San Juan River increased significantly overnight, and the San Juan River Bridge remains closed Sunday. Video shared with CBS Colorado shows a house in Pagosa Springs inundated with floodwaters. All that can be seen is a small piece of the roof and the chimney.
"I'm sorry, buddy. I tried. I really tried. But this one was bigger than the last one," Pagosa Springs resident Chris Mott said in another video of water rushing through a neighborhood. "It moved sandbags and everything."
About 4 feet of water flooded the home of San Juan County, New Mexico, Sheriff Shane Ferrari. He said the area's situation was stable Sunday, but he and other residents were trying to clean up and deal with damage.
San Juan County spokesperson Devin Neeley said the county did not have official numbers on damage to homes or the number of people evacuated, but he was not aware of any loss of life.
Neeley said the floodwaters were receding but left mud and silt, much of which has been contaminated with sewage because of failures at waste plants. There were still power outages affecting multiple areas, and it would likely be a few days until residents got their power back on.
"It's a pretty active disaster zone," he said. "We're not on the downswing by any means."
A tornado touched down in Santa Fe, New Mexico, around 7 p.m. Saturday, and forecasters were trying to confirm whether twisters also struck elsewhere in the state, said meteorologist Scott Overpeck with the weather service in Albuquerque. He did not have damage estimates.
Michelle Vialpando spotted a tornado from her patio in the Aldea de Santa Fe neighborhood, facing north towards Los Alamos. She had just gotten home from work and stepped outside to look at what she called "crazy" storm clouds when she noticed the twister.
"I was pretty surprised at what I was seeing and just started snapping photos," Vialpando wrote Sunday via Facebook. "I was literally in shock. I've lived in Santa Fe my entire life and have never seen anything like that before."
In the Farmington area of New Mexico, local officials said swollen rivers were receding but that many people remained evacuated and hundreds were without power.
The flooding is just the latest from two months of on-and-off heavy rain caused by tropical moisture coming ashore from the Pacific. After months of drought, other recent deadly flooding struck the Grand Canyon and areas of New Mexico.
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."
