The mix of steady rainfall and intermittent downpours caused mud and rock to wash over roads and marooned drivers on County Road 201 north of Durango.
Officials urged drivers to be wary of mud and silt wash, which can turn slick with just a little moisture, said Butch Knowlton, director of La Plata County’s Office of Emergency Management.
“It can become extremely slick, so we want people to slow down,” he said.
Montezuma County faced a flood watch Friday and Saturday, and began clearing up on Sunday, as balloonists took to the air in the Cortez Balloon Festival.
Cortez received about an inch of rain from Thursday night to 3 p.m. Friday. The average precipitation for July is about 1.5 inches, said local weather watcher Jim Andrus.
The storm also brought a high-stream advisory for the lower Mancos River on Friday morning.
In La Plata County, an area of particular concern was County Road 201 in the Animas Valley, Knowlton said. “We took a report on five people stranded behind a rock slide/mudslide/debris flow on County Road 201, and we’ve got a piece of equipment going to that area to open the road up so people can get down from the lower Hermosa trailhead and campground,” he said about 1 p.m.
The people later were able to get down the road, he said.