Heavy Rain Hail Hit Raton Minor Flooding Occurred

By Marty Mayfield
KRTN Multi-Media

It began about 3:10 p.m. Wednesday afternoon June 24, 2026 in downtown Raton and soon after pea and marble size hail hit the area along with heavy rain.

Four showers hit the downtown area from 3:15 to about 6:45 with a total rainfall amount of 2.90″  while 2.05″ falling at the KRTN State Street Studio.  Looking around the area unofficial rain totals as of 7:00 p.m. Wednesday evening showed 2.81″ at the upper end of Rio Grande Ave. 3.46″ fell near Ponil and North 3rd. 2.74″ fell in North Raton Wray Street in north Raton. A rain gauge on Colfax Avenue recorded 2.19″ with 1.77″ falling on Caviness Road in Northeast Raton.

Some minor flooding occurred on southbound North Second Street between Parsons Ave and Moulton Ave where a couple of cars became water logged and stranded in the foot deep water. The north underpass handled the water flow much better than it has in the past with no flooding occurring at that location. Raton Creek also ran about half full through north Raton where river is forced into the rock channel under North Second Street and North First Street.

The Raton Golf Course was asking for volunteers to help clean up after the torrential rains Thursday afternoon. Water captured north of the golf course along the hills flowed down the two draws on the north side of the course and flowed through the catch pond and on over the dam down along side Fairway #1 and down to the other catch ponds near the #8 green and the #9 Tee Box. The flow gathered a lot of debris that had collected above the golf course and brought it on down. The Golf Course has a golf tournament this weekend and has a lot of clean up to make that happen.

Note; The rainfall totals are considered unofficial because the weather instrument uses a tipping bucket style rain gauge that usually under reports heavy rainfall. The NWS uses a 4″ or 8″ standard rain gauge as official rain gauges with many amateur observers also reporting to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network or CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz). CoCoRaHS is always looking for observers, to join the organization go to their web page at https://www.cocorahs.org/