Heavy Rainfall Floods Homes, Businesses in East Mississippi, West Alabama

Extreme rainfall flooded roads and property in east-central Mississippi Thursday, leading authorities to rescue three people from vehicles and homes.

Water pushed a car into a ditch, and the driver escaped before the car submerged, local public media and the Associated Press reported. The man stood was rescued by law officers, the Winston County Sheriff said. Muddy water also rose into homes and businesses in and around Louisville.

Some 17,500 people live in Winston County. Louisville is about 95 miles northeast of Jackson.

The sheriff said the last time this much rain fell in the area was in 1977, when he was a child, he told the AP. Streets in Louisville, which had never been flooded, were underwater from the storm system that has battered much of the South for days.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation issued flash flood warnings on a few state highways in Winston and Neshoba counties. Roadways were also flooded in nearby Choctaw and Noxubee counties, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said.

In Sumter County Alabama, just southeast of Louisville, more than 10 inches of rain fell in a few hours. Flooding in the town of York, Alabama, was severe, an Alabama weather blog reported.

Topics Flood Mississippi Alabama