Flash Floods Soak Parts of Mississippi

Heavy rains led to road closures and several flash-flood warnings in Mississippi on Thursday, a day after warnings were issued for parts of Arkansas and Louisiana.

About 13 inches of rain had fallen in Winston County by Thursday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service office in Jackson, Miss. The weather followed days of destructive flooding across the Northeast.

A flash-flood emergency alert, indicating life-threatening danger, was in effect for cities including Louisville, Miss., which is in that county. Flash-flood warnings were issued for other parts of the state. Winston County is about 100 miles northeast of Jackson.

“It’s been raining about three inches an hour,” Sarah Sickles, a meteorologist in the Weather Service’s office in Jackson, said on Thursday afternoon, adding that “it’s still ongoing.”

Flooding was likely to continue through Thursday for a large portion of the state, but the rain was expected to wind down late in the afternoon. More rain was expected on Friday, but it was not expected to be as intense, Ms. Sickles said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, Ms. Sickles said, but the Mississippi Department of Transportation and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency told residents to avoid flooded roadways in portions of Winston, Choctaw and Noxubee counties.

“Do NOT drive through flooded areas!” the transportation agency wrote in a tweet.

In addition to road closures, there were reports of people being rescued from their homes, according to Ms. Sickles and the Winston County Sheriff’s Office.

Photos on social media showed rising waters reaching the windows of homes and cars while also flooding businesses. At least one roof of a business collapsed from heavy rain in downtown Ackerman, according to Dylan Hudler, a meteorologist at WCBI-TV who shared images of the damage.

The flash-flood warnings came a day after the National Weather Service in Shreveport, La., warned that dangerous amounts of rain could affect counties in southwestern Arkansas and northwestern Louisiana.

The warnings came days after the governor of Vermont said flooding there was “historic and catastrophic” and storms in New York killed a 43-year-old woman.