diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index ca37dc53..f8304d95 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@ CHANGELOG
 - When a Stack uses a Flux source, but the source has no artifact to download, park the Stack until
   the source has been updated, rather than retrying
   [#359](https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi-kubernetes-operator/pull/359)
+- Correct the stacks_failing metric in the case of a stack being deleted after failing
+  [#402](https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi-kubernetes-operator/pull/402)
 
 ## 1.10.1 (2022-10-25)
 
diff --git a/docs/metrics.md b/docs/metrics.md
index 62020767..45e7d8a4 100644
--- a/docs/metrics.md
+++ b/docs/metrics.md
@@ -20,8 +20,8 @@ Once the above are created, Prometheus will update its target scraping rules to
 
 The current implementation explicitly emits the following metrics:
 
-1. `stacks_active` - `gauge` that tracks the number of currently registered stacks managed by the system
-2. `stacks_failing` - `gaugevec` that provides information about stacks currently failing (`stack.status.lastUpdate.state` is `failed`)
+1. `stacks_active` - a `gauge` time series that reports the number of currently registered stacks managed by the system
+2. `stacks_failing` - a set of `gauge` time series, labelled by namespace, that gives the number of stacks currently failing (`stack.status.lastUpdate.state` is `failed`)
 
 In addition, we find tracking the following metrics emitted by the controller-runtime would be useful to track:
 
diff --git a/pkg/controller/stack/metrics.go b/pkg/controller/stack/metrics.go
index 0470223f..e9340973 100644
--- a/pkg/controller/stack/metrics.go
+++ b/pkg/controller/stack/metrics.go
@@ -66,4 +66,12 @@ func updateStackCallback(oldObj, newObj interface{}) {
 
 func deleteStackCallback(oldObj interface{}) {
 	numStacks.Dec()
+	oldStack, ok := oldObj.(*pulumiv1.Stack)
+	if !ok {
+		return
+	}
+	// assume that if there was a status recorded, this gauge exists
+	if oldStack.Status.LastUpdate != nil {
+		numStacksFailing.With(prometheus.Labels{"namespace": oldStack.Namespace, "name": oldStack.Name}).Set(0)
+	}
 }