Soggy Texas Soaked Again; Mississippians Also Flooded

Storms dumped up to five inches of rain Saturday on waterlogged Texas, prompting the evacuation of 15 families, while a downpour in Mississippi flooded 130 homes and forced up to 30 families to flee to higher ground, officials said.

Showers and thunderstorms were scattered over the Southern Plains, the Mississippi and Ohio valleys and the Atlantic Coast, with watches for severe thunderstorms posted from Virginia to southern New England.

But parts of East Texas, deluged with rain the entire month, again bore the brunt of the storms.

“Even during Hurricane Alicia, we didn’t have as bad a flood as we have now,” said Tom Angel, who was cut off from his wife and children when a bridge leading to the subdivision where he lives northeast of Lake Houston was covered by floodwaters said to be seven feet deep in spots.

The hurricane killed 18 people in August, 1983. The most recent flooding has been blamed for at least three drownings.

Up to five inches of rain fell Saturday at Medina, west of San Antonio, pushing a creek over its banks and prompting the evacuation of 15 families “as a precautionary measure,” a Fire Department official said.

Heavy rain also hit Mississippi, submerging 130 homes in Madison County with up to three feet of water. The floods forced 20 to 30 families to evacuate, police said.

Northeast Texas, which has not been hit as hard as the rain-saturated southern half of the state, began to get flooding Saturday. At Sulphur Springs, some roads were under two feet of water.

Minor street flooding was reported in Dallas, while many roads were closed in nearby Sunnyvale and extensive street flooding was reported at Austin.

Records show that it has rained in southeastern Texas every day since June 2. But relief appeared to be only a few days away.

“It looks like a low-pressure system that has been bringing the rain there . . . should be moving eastward very slowly the next two days,” Bill Barlow of the National Weather Service said. “The eastern half (of Texas) will have some locally heavy rain at least until Monday. It looks like things could be improving after that.”