Hurricane Polo's remnants bringing more rain to flood-struck US Southwest - By Mikella Schuettler, Jessica Hill and Matthew Brown, Associated Press
As former Hurricane Polo weakened over northwestern Mexico on Tuesday evening, the storm's remnants battered the U.S. Southwest, flooding roadways and forcing residents in small New Mexico towns to evacuate over concerns about a dam failing.
Polo had struck the Mexican state of Baja California Sur in the morning with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (177 kph). It crossed the Gulf of California and weakened to become a tropical storm as it moved inland to the northeast.
By Tuesday evening, the New Mexico Department of Transportation reported flooded roads and debris on highways across the state, while parts of Arizona had become especially drenched, leading to several water rescues.
That is after storms rolled through parts of the U.S. Southwest overnight Monday, saturating the ground, which can make flooding worse.
Later in the week, the flood risk is expected to move into parts of the central U.S., according to the National Weather Service.
Southwest US sees heavy rains and floods
Bands of rain continued to sweep across the U.S. Southwest, causing desert rivers to surge and usually dry arroyos to rage with floodwater.
The potential failure of the dam in south central New Mexico prompted evacuations in three small communities with hundreds of residents along the Rio Grande. People in Rincon, Salem and Garfield were told to seek higher ground immediately "before conditions worsen." Residents were later told to evacuate from nearby Hatch, home to prized green chile crops, and farther north in Placitas.
Wide swaths of the U.S. Southwest were under flood watches as the complex system of tropical weather spread northeast from Mexico, with Polo as the main event.
"Definitely looking at the chances for urban flooding," weather service meteorologist Carter Greulich in Albuquerque said. "Don't drive through flooded roadways. Remain out of the arroyos, especially in our urban areas."
A person stranded on top of a vehicle in floodwaters west of Phoenix was rescued Tuesday morning. Video taken by Arizona Fire and Medical Services showed a helicopter lowering a rescuer to a person clinging to their overturned car. And in Zion National Park, in Utah, a helicopter rescued three people in Heaps Canyon after flash flooding hit.
North of Phoenix, a truck was swept away in a wash. The driver got out safely, Maricopa County sheriff's officials said.
The rocky, desert area typically gets less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain annually with little vegetation to soak it up, making flash flooding a perpetual risk.
The Bureau of Land Management in Arizona also reported significant flooding and damage to access roads in a national conservation area and a sand dunes recreation area in the southeastern part of the state.
Back in Utah, the East Fork of the Virgin River near Zion raged with chocolate floodwater and a shipping container floated downstream.
In the small town of Orderville, Utah, where flooding began Monday night, Sabrina Dubay was driving home when her partner called and told her to stay away.
"The river came in and swept around the entirety of our house," Dubay said.
A camper, snowmobile trailer, and other items from Dubay's yard were swept away by the river. Neighbors and friends arrived to dig a trench around the house as the water rose around their home.
"It was coming in through our front doors," she said.
An unusually soggy September across the region set the stage: When the ground is saturated, rainfall has nowhere to go but run off.
"Runoff is likely going to start much quicker and lead to those flooding impacts quicker," Greulich said.
By late Tuesday, rain had started in parts of the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. Parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa were under flood watches, with flooding possible through at least Thursday.
Baja California residents were 'lucky'
Hurricane Polo pummeled Baja California Sur with powerful winds and rain as it made landfall.
After Polo passed over the small fishing town of Puerto San Carlos on the Baja California peninsula, residents waded among downed trees through ankle-high water that flooded some homes. Seeing their roughened community largely intact brought relief to those who had prepared for the worst.
Shopkeeper Elbia María Bachomo, 40, picked through furniture strewn through her home. She and her three children had gathered their clothes quickly and left for a shelter Monday as water began flooding into their home. Her husband was out on the water fishing for sardines when Polo hit. Bachomo said he was fortunate to escape alive.
"I thought, 'Oh no, what are we going to come back to? We will be left with nothing.' But we were lucky," she said.
Hundreds of people were in shelters Tuesday in Baja California Sur, but they were expected to return to their homes.
Meanwhile, the hurricane center reported Tropical Storm Rachel was moving parallel to Mexico's coast Tuesday and was expected to become a hurricane soon. The storm was about 300 miles (482.8 kilometers) west-southwest of Lazaro Cardenos with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (112.6 kph). It was moving northwest at 13 mph (20 kph).
In the central Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Nolo was starting to slow Tuesday but still threatened dangerous conditions for parts of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a marine conservation area. The storm moved northward after drenching parts of the Big Island over the weekend.
Pacific storm activity has been above average this year. That is consistent with El Niño years.
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Hill reported from Las Vegas and Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Martin Silva Rey and Eduardo Verdugo in Puerto San Carlos, Mexico, Megan Janetsky in Mexico City, Hallie Golden in Seattle, Julie Walker in New York, Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, Mikella Schuettler in Phoenix, Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Eugene Garcia and Gregory Bull in Hilo, Hawaii, contributed to this report.
Some Hatch Valley evacuations lifted after flooding - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
Late Tuesday night, Doña Ana County began lifting evacuation orders it had issued earlier in the day for several agricultural communities in the Hatch Valley.
As of 11 p.m., only Rincon remained under an evacuation notice, the county said, “due to the dangers of standing floodwaters.”
Residents of Hatch and the neighboring communities of Placitas, Salem, Garfield and Rincon were urged to evacuate Tuesday amid a flash flood emergency and concerns that an area dam and vital waterway were being overwhelmed by floods following heavy showers throughout the day.
It began with notices from the county that “strongly encouraged” several hundred residents of Salem, Garfield and Rincon, north of Las Cruces, to seek safer ground as the McLeod Dam (known locally as the Garfield dam) showed signs of potential failure.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
Water conservation program officials ask New Mexico lawmakers to boost funding amid drought - Matt Mondschein, Source New Mexico
State funding aimed at helping farmers and ranchers implement water conservation techniques is helping address a variety of drought-related problems, administrators, scientists and farmers told New Mexico lawmakers on Monday. They asked legislators to double the program’s funding next year as the state continues to suffer from record low snowpack and drought conditions.
A presentation in front of the Water and Natural Resources Committee during its meeting in Taos noted that 80% of New Mexico’s water benefits agriculture, and this year’srecord low snowpack and ongoing drought conditions have negatively impacted farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to produce crops and raise livestock.
In addition, much of the water that can be reused fromrainfall and flooding becomes “essentially wasted” without the proper collection and irrigation systems, Jon Hupp, owner of Goat Tree Orchard in Taos County, told lawmakers.
To address these issues, the Agricultural Water Resilience Program, administered by the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute at New Mexico State University, provides grants — up to $300,000 each — for farmers and ranchers to upgrade their infrastructure to collect and save water for agricultural production. The state Legislature appropriated $5 million in fiscal year 2026 for the program and doubled funding to $10 million in FY27.
The New Mexico Water Research Instituteprojects more than 938,000,000 gallons of water will be saved as a result of the projects funded in the 2026 cycle.
Hupp received $123,600 from the program to upgrade his irrigation system in order to reuse water,along with flow meters to measure water use and fertilization process.
“Frankly, it is hard to overstate how important this is,” Hupp said. “Without it, we would probably be wiped out by decreasing water availability which drastically limits our operations,” Hupp said.
Conservation officials said Monday they would like to see the funding for the program increase again in next year’s session. Debbie Hughes, executive director of the New Mexico Association of Conservation Districts, which oversees the 47 soil and water districts in the state, said she hopes to see funding doubled to $20 million to meet demand — a sentiment echoed by Hupp.
“We have to continue to improve the infrastructure so that water can be delivered and collected in a more efficient way,” Hupp said. “I think that if we don’t start doing that now, with the aridification and drought, a lot of people like me are going to disappear.”
New Mexico US Sen. Heinrich, Rep. Vasquez announce $10M for ‘relief route’ repairs – Source New Mexico staff
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich and U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, both New Mexico Democrats, on Monday announced $10 million in federal funding to repair the US285 Relief Route used to transport nuclear materials to the federal Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
WIPP, as its known, has served as an underground depository for transuranic radioactive waste from U.S. Department of Energy sites around the country since 1999.
According to a news release, Heinrich, a member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, announced in January that the funding had been included in Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations to improve roads leading to and from WIPP, marking the first time funds have been appropriated for this purpose since 2014.
During the last appropriations cycle, “I fought like hell to secure this funding,” Heinrich said in a statement, “to get New Mexico more of the funding we deserve for our role in maintaining the nation’s only deep geologic repository for radioactive defense waste.”
Heinrich has also introduced the WIPP Economic Assistance Assurance Act to amend the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act “to ensure sustained, inflation-adjusted funding for New Mexico communities to maintain vital infrastructure projects, such as road maintenance and repairs for the duration of WIPP’s operation,” the news release said.
In a statement, Vasquez said both New Mexico and WIPP serve as “the backbone of our nation’s nuclear program. The hardworking New Mexicans who run WIPP provide a critical service to the entire country — and the least the DOE can do is hold up their end of the bargain and meet their safety needs.”
Affordable apartment complex for seniors opens in International District – Gillian Barkhurst, Albuquerque Journal
A housing complex designed as affordable living for seniors has opened near a prominent intersection in Albuquerque’s International District.
The Albuquerque Journal reports that the four-story, 70-unit complex at 7800 Central Avenue Southeast, one block east of Louisiana Boulevard, is called Somos.
City officials and others attended a rainy opening ceremony with mariachi bands on Tuesday.
The complex was built in part by public dollars from federal, state and municipal governments, alongside private funding from developer Sol Housing.
The city of Albuquerque donated the property and provided more than $500,000 in tax abatements.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
Taos Regional Airport to provide first year-round, nonstop service to Denver International - John Miller, Albuquerque Journal
Taos Regional Airport is one step closer to becoming a travel gateway in the Southwest.
The town of Taos announced this week that its first full year of air service at Taos Regional Airport begins Thursday, marking an important milestone in the decade-long effort to transform the small airport into a full-service regional travel hub.
Headlining the announcement are round-trip flights to Denver International Airport via Contour Airlines. This expands previous summer connections Contour offered between the Soul of the Southwest and the Mile High City into year-round service.
Winter and summer service to Dallas and Austin, Texas, as well as Carlsbad, California, are also returning through JSX, a public charter operator.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
