Former Hurricane Polo’s remnants are flooding the U.S. Southwest, forcing New Mexico evacuations over dam fears and prompting water rescues from Arizona to Utah.
Heavy rain from the leftover storm system pushed desert rivers over their banks Tuesday and sent usually dry creek beds roaring with runoff, flooding highways and cutting off small towns along the Rio Grande.
The Associated Press reported that the former hurricane had weakened over northwestern Mexico after striking Baja California Sur, then hurled its moisture north into an already soaked region. Overnight storms Monday had saturated the ground, so new rain turned dangerous fast.
New Mexico officials ordered residents in Rincon, Salem, and Garfield to higher ground at once “before conditions worsen.” Concerns about a dam failing later pushed the same warning to Hatch and farther north to Placitas.
Hundreds of people in those south-central New Mexico communities faced the sudden call to leave. Hatch sits in chile country; the flooding hit just as the desert landscape least able to absorb it took another pounding.
Parts of Arizona took an especially hard drenching. Arizona Fire and Medical Services used a helicopter to lower a rescuer to a person clinging to an overturned vehicle west of Phoenix on Tuesday morning.
North of the city, a truck was swept away in a wash. Maricopa County sheriff’s officials said the driver got out safely.
The Bureau of Land Management reported significant flooding and damage to access roads in a national conservation area and a sand dunes recreation area in southeastern Arizona. In a region that often sees less than 10 inches of rain in a full year, the sudden surge left roads buried in water and debris.
National Weather Service meteorologist Carter Greulich in Albuquerque put the risk in plain terms for drivers and anyone near low ground.
Greulich said crews were “definitely looking at the chances for urban flooding.”
"Don’t drive through flooded roadways. Remain out of the arroyos, especially in our urban areas."
He also warned that prior rain had left the soil packed, so new runoff would move faster than usual.
"Runoff is likely going to start much quicker and lead to those flooding impacts quicker."
That is the hard rule in flash-flood country: six inches of moving water can take a car, and a dry wash can become a torrent in minutes.
In Utah, the East Fork of the Virgin River near Zion National Park ran high and muddy. A shipping container floated in the chocolate-colored floodwater. A helicopter pulled three people from Heaps Canyon.
In Orderville, flooding started Monday night. Resident Sabrina Dubay was driving home when her partner called and told her to stay away. The river had already wrapped around their house.
Dubay described the scene after she returned.
"The river came in and swept around the entirety of our house."
Water pushed through the front doors. A camper, a snowmobile trailer, and other yard items were carried off. Neighbors and friends dug a trench to try to redirect the flow.
"It was coming in through our front doors."
The New Mexico Department of Transportation said flooded roads and debris blocked highways across the state by Tuesday evening. The same moisture that rescued crews fought in Arizona was still working its way through the high desert.
Before the remnants reached the U.S. border, Polo struck Baja California Sur with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph. Streets in Puerto San Carlos flooded. Trees and electric lines came down. Residents waded through water while hundreds waited in shelters Tuesday, with most expected to return home once the water dropped.
Shopkeeper Elbia María Bachomo, 40 and a mother of three, picked through furniture strewn inside her home. She and the children had grabbed clothes and left for a shelter Monday as water poured in. Her husband was out fishing for sardines when the storm hit; she said he was fortunate to make it back alive.
Bachomo summed up the fear many families felt walking back through the mess.
"I thought, ‘Oh no, what are we going to come back to? We will be left with nothing.’ But we were lucky."
Polo later crossed the Gulf of California, weakened to a tropical storm, and moved inland toward the northeast. The system’s leftover rain is what then stacked on top of the earlier soaking rains across the Southwest.
Rain had already started late Tuesday in parts of the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. The weather service said flood risk was expected to shift into portions of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, with flooding possible through at least Thursday.
Wide swaths of the Southwest remained under flood watches while the moisture marched east. Separate tropical systems were also on the board: Tropical Storm Rachel was moving parallel to Mexico’s coast with 70 mph winds and was expected to strengthen, while Hurricane Nolo had already drenched parts of Hawaii’s Big Island and still threatened remote waters farther west.
No confirmed injury or death totals were reported from the Southwest flooding or the Baja landfall in the available accounts. The immediate picture was flooded roads, forced evacuations, helicopter rescues, damaged access routes, and families hauling ruined belongings out of single-story homes.
Small desert towns do not get many second chances when a weakened hurricane still carries this much water. Common sense still matters most: stay out of the washes, move when officials say move, and treat every flooded road as deeper and faster than it looks.
