Heavy rains have dominated the weather forecasts across much of the Southwest this week. Some areas in eastern New Mexico have seen almost four inches of rain so far. That's more than double the average amount of moisture that usually falls there in the entire month of September.
The wet weather began early Tuesday and is expected to hang around through Thursday afternoon, bringing record breaking rainfall to eastern Arizona, southern Colorado and much of New Mexico.
"When you have that amount of rain," Jones said, "that volume of water has to go somewhere. You're having issues on roads, the culverts just can't handle that volume of water. So things start to build up really quick and it persists because this rain lasted not 30 minutes, but on the order of four to five hours."
However, Jones said, when it comes to the drought, this storm system is a nice shot in the arm but total rain deficits remain high.
