Road closed due to flooding in Boulder County, Colo.
© 9News.comRoad closed due to flooding in Boulder County, Colo.
Torrential rain drenched parts of Colorado, washing away homes and causing at least two deaths as officials worked Thursday to evacuate towns and keep people out of the path of the rising water.

The National Weather Service described a "life-threatening situation" in an emergency message issued just after midnight local time for several areas around Boulder, where about 6.5 inches of rain fell in the last 24 hours, according to the National Weather Service.

The first death was reported near Jamestown, according to officials, and was thought to be because of a building collapse. The Colorado Springs Fire Department reported a second death on Thursday morning after a body was recovered near Interstate 25.

John Schulz , Public Information Officer of the Larimer County Sheriff's office in Colo., said a series of dams overflowed and one broke overnight, killing one, and threatening hundreds more.

Authorities found the second body while out patrolling in the I-25 area around 5:30 a.m. local time, Colorado Springs Fire Department spokeswoman Sunny Smaldino told NBC News affiliate KUSA.

The deadliest flood in Colorado history occurred in Larimer County in July of 1976, when the Big Thompson River swelled its banks, killing 144 people and causing more than $85 million in damages, according to data compiled by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Water reached as high as first-floor windows in some parts of Boulder, a police and fire spokeswoman said. Dive teams were dispatched after cars were seen floating.

"There was one woman that was on top of a vehicle and the vehicle was actually on its side," the spokeswoman said. The rain has also caused mudslides 2 to 3 feet deep in some areas, which are impassable "even if you have an SUV," she added.

Libraries, recreation centers and other Boulder facilities were closed, according to the city's office of emergency management. Energy companies workers were trying to restore power after several flood-related outages, but expected more problems to be reported as the sun rose, according to the emergency office's website.

More than 700 customers were without power on Thursday morning in and around the city of Boulder, according to an outage map maintained by utility supplier Xcel Energy.

Officials said that they evacuated Fourmile Canyon, to the west of Boulder, and Jamestown, to the north. They asked people to remain indoors and off the roads even as flood waters were expected to recede throughout the day.

"It may look OK in your neighborhood, but by the time you get on the thoroughfare to work, you may run into some real issues," Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle told local newspaper the Daily Camera. "We've got cars in water and debris and manholes missing their covers literally everywhere in the county."

The University of Colorado Boulder said on its Twitter account that its campus would be closed Thursday, until officials could assess the storm damage, and some residences were evacuated. Between 400 and 500 graduate students, faculty, and staff are thought to be displaced from on-campus housing units, said university spokesman Bronson Hilliard, and there may be "minor damage" to some buildings.

"We are pleading with students and people on this campus to stay indoors," Ryan Huff, a spokesman for the campus police, said at a press conference early Thursday morning. "It is dangerous out there."

An earth dam in the Big Elk Meadows area collapsed, according to the Larimer County Sheriff's office, causing officials to warn people in the path of the water to be ready to make their way to higher ground if necessary. The sheriff's office said on its Twitter feed that "extrication operations" were underway and that the amount of water thought to have escaped the dam was "relatively small."

The area is thinly populated, NBC News affiliate KUSA reported.

The sheriff's office requested a National Guard helicopter to rescue several families trapped after a road was washed away in Larimer County.

"The road is completely gone," a spokeswoman said. "They have no way of getting out."

University of Colorado Boulder spokesman Ryan Huff pleaded with students to not go outside in dangerous flood conditions as the school closes its campus.

Sheriffs in Boulder County were unable to reach the area of the fatality near Jamestown because of thick mud and rock slides.

Several buildings were washed away, a spokesman for the Boulder Office of Emergency Management said.

"It's a very rough situation," the spokesman said.

The agency had also received reports of people being trapped inside and on top of their cars.

Michael Palmer, a meteorologist from The Weather Channel, said early Thursday that the Boulder area was "not out of the woods yet, by any means."

"The worst of the rain in Colorado is probably over. But there's another batch in the area which could rotate into Boulder," Palmer said. "This is going to exacerbate the situation - it won't take a lot on top of what they've already had to cause additional flooding."

The heavy rain is part of a wider system affecting Colorado and New Mexico, Palmer said.