"On Thursday morning in Hurricane, Utah, Juana Puga stood in ankle-deep brownish water asking herself: "Why again?"
Just a couple hours earlier, at around 8:30am, Puga went out to run some errands. It wasn't raining outside, she says. But when she returned to her house, rainwater had flooded her whole yard.
"It was just coming in so fast that it was just hard to even understand," Puga says. "Within five minutes most of my house was underwater."
Rare, heavy rainfall started to hit New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona on Wednesday. Since then, brown-colored floodwaters have led to road closures, mandatory evacuations and emergency declarations across the four states. The southern Utah city of Hurricane issued an emergency declaration on Thursday after flooding damaged more than 100 homes and RVs."
Ava Berger reports for NPR October 24, 2026.
