Roads looked more like rivers, as Louisiana continued to be pounded by more drenching rain Saturday. Shreveport is currently 14 inches above normal for rainfall at this time of the year. Not far from Lafayette, residents were scrambling to find sand bags as the waters rose, threatening many homes. Louisiana has been barraged by heavy rain since Thursday night, when a slow-moving weather system rapidly dumped three to five inches across the state. Local police closed dozens of roads in eastern Texas and northwestern Louisiana Friday due to flash flooding, and many remained impassible Saturday.
Severe thunderstorms injure several in North Dakota.
It was a wild weather night in North Dakota, as severe storms swept across the east-central part of the state late Friday. Winds with gusts reported as high as 90 mph blew several grain cars of the Canadian Pacific Railway into an oncoming freight train, derailing several cars and sending two engineers to a local hospital for minor injuries. Wind also tore down powerlines and trees, and damaged several homes. There were reports of a tornado touch-down, but the National Weather Service has not confirmed any significant damage. Warm weather dominated California and the Southwest for most of the week, along with an increase in seasonal monsoonal rainfall across the latter region.