HOUSTON -- At least two people are dead and five others are missing after last week's torrential rains in Texas and Kansas, officials said Saturday, noting that though the threat of severe weather over the long holiday weekend had lessened in Texas, the focus is now on swollen rivers and waterways that are slowly rising and could flood homes.
"The skies are clear and things look good. But we want to make sure people understand that we are not out of the woods yet. We have to keep an eye on water that's coming through our bayou system," said Francisco Sanchez, a spokesman for the Office of Emergency Management in Harris County, where Houston is located.
Other parts of the U.S. were drenched Friday, including Kansas. And on Saturday afternoon, Tropical Storm Bonnie formed in the Atlantic Ocean and unleashed rain and wind on the coast of South Carolina.
In central Kansas, the Wichita Fire Department said Saturday that it's searching for an 11-year-old boy who disappeared after he was swept away by a swollen creek Friday night. The department said on its Facebook page that two cadaver police dogs were taking part in the search.
In Washington County, Texas, between Austin and Houston, two people have died and two are missing after more than 16.5 inches of rain fell in some places on Thursday and Friday. The torrential rainfall swelled rivers and other waterways, washing away mobile homes and flooding other structures. Authorities performed more than 50 water rescues.
Washington County Judge John Brieden said Saturday that one person was found dead in a mobile home that was swamped by floodwaters, and a second person was found in a vehicle that had gone off a road and into a submerged ditch.
Brieden also said two motorists were missing in separate parts of the rural county: One vehicle was found without its driver, and the other vehicle couldn't be found. Brieden said the fear is that it may be submerged and won't be found until floodwaters recede.
Near Austin in Travis County, which saw up to 9 inches of rain last week, officials were searching for two missing people whose vehicle was swept off a flooded roadway, according to emergency services spokesman Lisa Block.
The rising water in several Houston-area rivers and creeks prompted Harris County officials to ask about 750 families in the Northwood Pines subdivision to voluntarily evacuate their homes and apartments on Saturday. Officials also warned residents living near the west fork of the San Jacinto River, north of Houston, that rising waters were likely to flood homes, even those that are elevated, Sanchez said.
In Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, officials warned residents that the Brazos River was likely to rise to the highest level ever recorded in the county, which county Judge Robert Hebert called "a serious incident."
The city of Simonton issued a mandatory evacuation for most of its 800 residents, Mayor Louis Boudreaux said.
"It's going rather smoothly," Boudreaux said of the evacuation.
Elsewhere, Tropical Storm Bonnie formed Saturday afternoon about 125 miles off the coast from Charleston, S.C., and was moving northwest near 10 mph with top sustained winds of 40 mph, forecasters said.
Forecasters said they expect the storm to move onshore south of Charleston this morning, then turn northeast and slowly dissipate as it moves along the coast of the Carolinas over the rest of Memorial Day weekend.
Bonnie is the year's second named tropical storm, emerging just four days before the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. No evacuations had been ordered by Saturday evening. The center said tropical storm warnings were issued for the entire South Carolina coast and that Bonnie's extended system was dumping rain already in coastal areas.
The first Atlantic storm of 2016 was Hurricane Alex, which made an out-of-season debut in January over the far eastern Atlantic. The storm was the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic in January since 1938 and made landfall in the Azores on Jan. 15.
Information for this article was contributed by David Warren and Jeffrey Collins of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/29/2016