Floods cut a swath of destruction across the United States

Residents of low-lying towns stacked sandbags or grabbed belongings and evacuated Wednesday after a foot of rain pushed rivers and creeks out of their banks in the nation's midsection. At least 13 deaths had been linked to the weather, and three people were missing.
Arkansas and parts of southern Illinois, southern Indiana and southwestern Ohio, and schools were closed in parts of western Kentucky because of flooded roads.

The bodies of two individuals swept away by flood waters were recovered Wednesday afternoon.
The body of Steve R. Healy, 35, of McLeansboro was recovered by dive teams around 1:49 p.m. The body of Shannon C. Allen, 20, of Mt. Vernon was recovered around 2:15 p.m.

Jefferson County Sheriff Roger Mulch said Allen was traveling in a vehicle, driven by Healy, along with a third passenger, Nicole Asbury, also in her 20’s and residing in Mt. Vernon.
Asbury survived the incident. Her condition has not been released.

Residents of low-lying towns stacked sandbags or grabbed belongings and evacuated Wednesday after a foot of rain pushed rivers and creeks out of their banks in the nation's midsection. At least 11 deaths had been linked to the weather, and four people were missing.

Flooding forced hundreds of people to flee their homes and closed scores of roads Wednesday across a wide swath of the nation's midsection as a huge storm system poured as much as 10 inches of rain on the region.

Four deaths were linked to the flooding in Missouri, and five people were killed in a highway wreck in heavy rain in Kentucky. Searches were underway in Texas for a teenager washed down a drainage pipe and in Missouri for a man missing in a creek, and two people were missing in Arkansas after their vehicles were swept away by rushing water.

The National Weather Service posted flood and flash flood warnings from Texas to Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and evacuations were underway
in parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Ohio.

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- A band of rain and thunderstorms moved east and flood warnings were in effect from Texas to Ohio after rivers and streams overflowed across the central U.S., killing at least three people.

The rain is forecast to stop falling in the Midwest today as the storms pass, although there is still danger of flooding throughout the region since it may take a few days for waters to recede, AccuWeather.com said in a statement on its Web site.

At least three people died in Missouri yesterday because of the weather, the state Emergency Management Agency said on its Web site. A state transportation worker was killed while setting up a barrier, a person was swept off a bridge and another man died after his car was pushed off the road by floodwaters.

Torrential rains that hammered southern Missouri from Springfield to Cape Girardeau caused widespread flooding Tuesday. One man drowned and hundreds of people were left homeless.

The flooding closed nearly 200 roads and sent propane tanks and debris spiraling down lowlands turned into raging rivers.

Heavy rain began falling Monday and just kept coming. Forecasters said some parts of the state could see 10 inches of rain or more before the storms stop today.