Southwestern Colorado flooding by the numbers: 540 damaged homes, 40 rescue missions and counting

Days after historic flooding swept through southwestern Colorado, the scope of the destruction is still coming into focus. 

Emergency responders shared early statistics at an Archuleta County community meeting Tuesday. Transportation officials are requesting millions of dollars in federal aid. As new information comes to light, it offers a glimpse into the devastating impacts of the floods. 

But these facts and figures are changing quickly, and they don’t fully capture the losses, strain and sense of community caused by the flooding. 

“We’ve watched first responders put themselves in harm’s way. We’ve seen our public crews work long hours to restore access. … We’ve seen local businesses provide resources when families need it the most,” Warren Brown, chair of the Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners, said Tuesday evening in Pagosa Springs. “We’ve seen people open their homes, lend their equipment, share their time, and offer a helping hand without asking what they are going to receive in return. That’s the strength of our community.”

The flooding impacted 12 counties in southern Colorado and more around the Four Corners. It was caused by a storm that began Wednesday, bringing tropical moisture from the Pacific Ocean and the remnants of Hurricane Trudy to the region.

The torrential rain overwhelmed rivers late Thursday into Friday, causing evacuations, damaging key traffic corridors and destroying buildings. 

Communities and officials are still assessing the damage ahead of another storm in the forecast for this weekend. So far, many of the preliminary figures measuring rescues, damage to homes and roads, and response efforts have come from Archuleta County. 

“It has been absolutely devastating. We have not, in this county, in our time, witnessed anything as big as this act of Mother Nature,” Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux said at the meeting. 

From staggering rainfall totals to the hours county crews have spent repairing roads so far, and the millions of dollars requested to rebuild state roads, here’s a look at the flooding and its aftermath, by the numbers.

Read more: Southwestern Colorado floods

34 hours

It took about 34 hours for many rivers in southwestern Colorado to reach their peak flows during the storm. 

For many parts of the region, rivers started rising slowly Wednesday night and more quickly Thursday, eventually peaking Friday. 

As the storm passed over the San Juan Mountains, it sent torrents of water into local rivers, like the Animas, San Juan and Rio Grande, before flowing south into New Mexico. 

The South Fork of the Rio Grande rose 6 feet over about 33 hours, flooding parts of communities including the town of South Fork, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. 

The Animas River, which flows through Durango, started rising Oct. 21 in the evening. It rose by about 4.8 feet, peaking around 2 p.m. Friday, according to a U.S. Geological Survey river gauge. 

The Animas, like many other rivers in the area, eventually flows into the San Juan River. The San Juan flows through Navajo Reservoir, Farmington, New Mexico, and Bluff, Utah, before it eventually joins the Colorado River. It flooded communities along the way.

Zero 

No injuries or deaths have been reported in Archuleta County as of Tuesday.

800 structures

The number of structures affected by the flooding across Archuleta County, including about 540 homes as of Tuesday, Brown, a county commissioner, said.

40 missions 

The number of individual missions performed by the Colorado Incident Management Team as of Tuesday. 

“We’ve got roads that are completely impassable, but in between, you have areas that people are living in. They’re on islands essentially, and they cannot get out,” Steve Peck, an operations chief with the Colorado Incident Management Team. “We’ve been going in there and pulling those people out.”

• 325: During the missions, responders made 325 “contacts” — check-ins for homes, stranded vehicles, people stranded in the woods and other individuals.
• 38: The number of stranded people brought to safety during the floods, some with significant medical issues. 
• 18: The number of pets rescued. 
• 4: The number of Forest Service roads that were significantly damaged by flooding and had people trapped on the other side of blocked areas.

15 feet

In Pagosa Springs, the San Juan River measured at about 5.5 feet at the USGS river gauge Oct. 21 in the afternoon.

At first, forecasts showed that the peak would be somewhere around 10.8 feet — a moderate flood that was 2 feet lower than a flood in October 2025. But the rain continued, the forecast worsened, and water kept flooding into the channel. 

The river rose about 9.5 feet in 34 hours and peaked at 15.02 feet at 5:30 a.m. Friday.

1911

The year the San Juan River reached its highest level on record, at 17.18 feet, was in 1911, according to NOAA data. Two people were killed and $1 million in property losses were recorded.

This year’s high-water mark of 15.02 feet was the second-worst on record for the San Juan River through Pagosa Springs. 

44,238 cubic feet per second 

The peak flows into Navajo Reservoir during the storm were over 44,000 cubic feet per second, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. (This is how water watchers talk about the speed and volume of water.)

Flows dropped to about 7,000 cfs as of Tuesday. The flows were as low as 14 cfs in early September and averaged about 3,100 cfs between July and mid-October, before the storm, according to a Colorado Sun analysis of bureau data.

266,000 acre-feet of water

About 266,000 acre-feet of water has flowed into Navajo Reservoir as of Oct. 26, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. That’s equivalent to more than 86 billion gallons of water. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to four households.

2.5 in 2 days

The San Luis Valley in southern Colorado had its wettest two-day period on record during the rainfall between Oct. 21 and Saturday, according to the Colorado Climate Center. The Alamosa area recorded 2.11 inches of rain across two days, Monte Vista received 2.56 inches and Del Norte received 2.74 inches. 

The second-highest two-day period for the Alamosa area was October 1959 with 1.99 inches of precipitation. Del Norte’s most recent two-day record was in March 1985 with 2.55 inches.

1,000+ sandbags

The number of sandbags first responders, public works staff and volunteers filled by hand by Oct. 21, in preparation for the floods in Archuleta County, Le Roux said. 

1 to 3 inches of rain and snow still to come

Between 1 and 3 more inches of rain are forecast for southwestern Colorado this weekend, according to the National Weather Service’s Oct. 27 outlook. The rain could start Friday but the bulk of precipitation is expected Sunday morning through Monday, the service said.

The storm could change direction and impact more of New Mexico, forecasters said. The National Weather Service is expected to share an updated weather outlook Thursday morning.

13 Forest Service roads

The number of U.S. Forest Service roads that are closed because of significant failures, based on the agency’s preliminary analysis of areas that have been severely damaged and where people might be trapped. Eight of those will likely be closed for a “long duration” and require a lot of resources to fix, Josh Peck, Pagosa District ranger for the San Juan National Forest, said Tuesday at a community meeting in Pagosa Springs.

“Your national forest is going to be very different for the long term, just like your community is going to be very different,” Peck said. “We’re going to be working through that over time.” 

150 miles of impassable county roads

Archuleta County has responsibility for about 282 miles of the 595 miles of roadway in the county. Of the county’s roads, 150 miles are impassable, Brown said.

7,000 hours 

The number of hours worked by county road and bridge crews over the past two months, as frequent rainstorms rolled through Archuleta County this fall, to ensure roads were safe and passable, according to county officials.

$65 million

The amount state transportation officials requested from the federal government Wednesday to repair significant flood damage to highways across southwestern Colorado. They are asking for $6.5 million, or 10%, of the funds right away so that crews can get started on repairs before winter.

At the height of the flooding, water reached depths of more than 4 feet on some roads, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Colorado 151, a critical rural highway that connects communities of Pagosa Springs, Ignacio, Tiffany, Allison and Arboles, remains closed after the river washed away the highway about 7 miles south of the road’s junction with U.S. 160 in two areas. CDOT is planning for a temporary access road for residents and emergency responders and permanent reconstruction will follow.

Wolf Creek Pass between Pagosa Springs and South Fork reopened Tuesday afternoon but sustained serious damage, including a 20-foot-deep culvert that failed about 5 miles north of Pagosa Springs. It caused a sinkhole and about 100 feet of damage to the highway, Shoshana Lew, executive director for CDOT, wrote Tuesday in a letter requesting federal relief dollars.

U.S. 550 is open to one-lane alternating traffic on Red Mountain Pass north of Silverton as crews work on stabilizing a washed-out embankment and shoulder. 

Water gauges at the San Juan River bridge on U.S. 60 near Cortez showed that floodwaters reached levels associated with a 500-year flood event. Protecting most of the bridge’s structure from erosion could cost $9 million, CDOT said.