Why it happens here
How water gets into Pueblo houses.
Pueblo averages about 12 inches of rain and melted snow a year. Most of it falls between April and September, often in short, heavy storms, and it lands on houses that are older than most in Colorado.
1965Median year a City of Pueblo home was built (Colorado: 1988)
About 44% of the city's homes went up before 1960, and more than one in five before 1940. In Bessemer, the steel company built hundreds of four- and five-room houses west of the mill. The North Side began filling in during the 1880s, and Mesa Junction was a trolley stop in the old town of South Pueblo.
Plaster over wood lath is common in homes built before the 1940s, and the National Park Service notes that gypsum plaster is more vulnerable to water damage than lime. A slow leak under an old bathroom or at a worn roof flashing often goes unseen for years.
2.11 inAverage August rain, Pueblo's wettest month
July is close behind. Monsoon moisture arrives from mid-July into September, and the last week of July into early August is Colorado's peak flash-flood season. The EPA says wet materials should be dried within 24 to 48 hours. A basement or crawl space soaked in one of these storms often stays damp longer than that, and a swamp cooler running through the same weeks adds moisture indoors.
July 29, 2009Pueblo's costliest hailstorm
Colorado's hail season runs from mid-April to mid-September, and Pueblo County logged 91 hail reports from 2018 to 2025. A roof cracked or dented by hail can let water into the attic for months before a stain shows on the ceiling. Once your roofer has fixed the roof, Jim and Karen treat the attic and whatever the water reached.
1921The Arkansas River floods downtown
On June 3, 1921, the river topped its levees and put the business district under water. Afterward it was moved about a third of a mile, and the Riverwalk now runs in the old channel (Colorado Public Radio has the history). Fountain Creek flooded 53 city blocks in June 1965. More than 90% of Pueblo's 100-year floodplain is built on, and summer storms still flood basements, as they did in south Pueblo in July 2025.
