Doyle Rice

USA TODAY

"Catastrophic" flooding could swamp portions of the Southwest over the next few days due to heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Odile, which battered Mexico's Baja Peninsula on Monday.

The amount of rain predicted "could result in life-threatening flash floods and mudslides" in portions of the Desert Southwest, the National Hurricane Center warned.

"Showers and thunderstorms with heavy rainfall over expected parts of the Southwest, Southern Rockies, and into parts of the Great Basin through Wednesday evening," the Weather Prediction Center reported in an online forecast.

These predicted rainfall amounts — such as 9 inches near Tucson — are more than two-thirds of the amount of rain typically received in an entire year, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Mike Smith.

"If this forecast is anywhere near correct, catastrophic flooding will occur in Arizona and New Mexico, including highway washouts," Smith wrote on his blog, Meteorological Musings.

Flash flood watches are in place for most of Arizona, along with parts of California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas.

Conditions are ripe for a repeat of last week's flooding, said Randy Cerveny, a professor at Arizona State University's School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning.

"The upper atmospheric circulation right now is very similar to last week's," Cerveny said. "So the current moisture from Hurricane Odile is likely (to) move up into at least southern Arizona and trigger more heavy rains and floods, just like Norbert's moisture did last week, possibly as far north as the Phoenix metro area."

Fire stations across metropolitan Phoenix were already giving out sandbags to residents on Monday. City and county officials said there is little they could do before the storm beyond distributing sandbags.

The Salt River Project — which supplies water to Phoenix — was criticized last week for not draining canals in advance of storms to accommodate flood waters and divert them from homes.

Spokesman Scott Harrelson said this time the utility is draining as many of the channels as it can, but he said that SRP is in the midst of a high-demand season and that farmers cannot go without irrigation despite the expected storms.

Contributing: The Arizona Republic