Flood Watches Cover Four Corners as Rain Swamps Desert Roads

Flood watches reached across the Four Corners region and parts of Nevada this weekend as heavy rain moved through the desert Southwest.

The National Weather Service projected as much as four inches of rain across the area from Saturday night through Monday. Watches covered nearly all of Arizona, southern Utah, southwest Colorado, west New Mexico and parts of southern Nevada. The Four Corners area, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet, sits largely unpopulated and has taken repeated rain through the autumn.

"It will not take much rain to have some impact in some of these places, simply because they are already very saturated," said Allison Santorelli, a forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. She said the weekend rain was expected to produce both flash flooding and rises on small streams.

Rescue crews worked flooded streets across the region on Friday. The Phoenix Fire Department reported pulling four people from vehicles in waterlogged intersections that night. In Scottsdale, a fire captain said teams reached one person in a stranded car when a second vehicle carrying two people entered the water and had to be pulled out. Scottsdale fire captain Dave Folio said in a Facebook video that two inches of water can "take the vehicle off its wheels" and that cars sat in three to four feet of water.

Henderson, Nevada, crews near Las Vegas ran three swift-water rescues Friday afternoon after a heavy downpour, a city spokesman told local media. One person came off a car roof, two were pulled from a vehicle swept by current, and a person found in a dry wash was rescued but went into cardiac arrest and died at the hospital.

In western Arizona, Friday rain left water, rock and debris across Bullhead City streets and forced park closures, the city said in Facebook posts.