Tropical Storm Arthur’s remnants brought drenching rain, strong wind, flash flooding, and tornadoes across parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, with officials urging evacuations—including around the Jourdan River and below the Anchor Lake dam—while rescue crews
By Thursday night, the water had turned routine streets into hazards—forcing rescues, trapping residents, and pushing officials to order evacuations in areas already under flood warnings.
The remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur battered parts of the southeastern United States with drenching rains and strong wind on Thursday. The storm had formed quickly and was downgraded within a day. but the system’s lingering impact left dangerous conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi. Heavy rain and flooding hit those states and other parts of the region. and while the system was weakening Friday and on track to move out into the Atlantic this weekend. the danger didn’t disappear.
On Friday, flooding risks still threatened more than 63 million people. CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan said another 1 to 3 inches of rain could fall in some places. including Atlanta. Birmingham. and Jacksonville. The scale of what’s already happened has been staggering: more than 257 flash flooding incidents have been reported since Sunday across a strip of the Southeast stretching from Texas to Georgia.
In Mississippi, emergency officials asked residents living near the Jourdan River to consider evacuating. The river remains under a flood warning and is expected to crest Friday morning.
In Louisiana, Gov. Jeff Landry issued a state of emergency after Arthur battered the state.
The flooding was not only widespread—it was fast enough to break people’s assumptions about what their homes could withstand. In one rural Louisiana parish. more than 2 feet of rain fell in 48 hours. with most of that soaking coming on Thursday. Donald Jones. a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles. said. Two of the week’s highest rainfall reports from the Gulf Coast came from Cottonport and Plaucheville in Louisiana’s Avoyelles Parish. which received 29 inches and 22.5 inches of rain. respectively. according to the weather service. Simmesport, another nearby town, received more than 17 inches of rain.
Those numbers match the damage residents described. In Avoyelles Parish, Life-threatening flooding flooded at least 200 homes, according to Louisiana state Rep. Daryl Deshotel.
“Even by this region’s standards, that’s catastrophic rain,” Jones said.
Along the coast, tornadoes added another layer of destruction to already-dangerous conditions. At least four tornadoes broke out along the Gulf Coast as a result of Arthur’s impacts, part of a larger group of destructive twisters that damaged communities in the Midwest this week.
Perkinston, Mississippi, became one of the clearest examples of how quickly conditions deteriorated. Life-threatening floods trapped people in a campground as rescuers used canoe paddles to break through windows of RVs. Cars and mobile homes were washed away. A rain gauge in a town near Perkinston showed upwards of 12 inches of rain fell there on Thursday. and the same amount was recorded by another gauge near Black Creek. about 25 miles north. the weather service said.
Some residents said they barely made it out before the water took control. Nicole Jackson and her fiancé, Hayden, told CBS News they barely managed to escape before head-high floodwaters swept through their home in Stone County, Mississippi.
“It’s insane how quickly it rose,” Jackson said. “People that lived here a lot longer than us are absolutely shocked.”
As rescues continued, officials in Mississippi said at least 38 people had been taken from danger. A spokesperson for the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office in Mississippi told CBS News that “roughly 38 people” had been rescued by the department as of Thursday night. and that no fatalities or serious injuries were reported.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves also addressed the toll of the storm during cleanup operations. In a social media post Thursday night. Reeves said a worker on a county road crew in the southwestern part of the state had been killed while helping with storm cleanup operations. Reeves did not disclose the cause of the death.
Even where water levels were expected to rise further, officials moved early. Thirty homes below the Anchor Lake dam in southern Mississippi were being evacuated as a precaution due to concerns that rising waters could overwhelm the spillways and compromise the structure. Reeves said. Residents in the area were being encouraged to seek higher ground.
In Houma, southwest of New Orleans, Coni Dubois said several inches of water flooded her home overnight, though she said others in the community suffered worse damage. She described a sound and light show that felt unlike the storms she’d lived through.
“She’s lived through many hurricanes and other storms, but never witnessed thunder and lightning like this,” the report says. Dubois said, “It was unbelievable, it literally sounded like hell broke open.” She added that she thought for sure there was a tornado on top of her.
“The lightning and the thunder was so consistent, the whole house was lit up like daylight for about 20 minutes,” Dubois said.
Rescue and emergency response involved more than local crews. The National Guard and state wildlife officials were working with rescue crews, officials said. In Avoyelles Parish, one tornado had been confirmed, along with three others near New Orleans, the weather service said.
For Cody Coco, the storm turned his day into a series of desperate decisions. Amid relentless rainfall in central Louisiana. Coco said he rescued stranded workers—waist deep in water—at a cypress sawmill operation he runs near his home in Avoyelles Parish. He said the water continued to rise all throughout the day.
Coco also said he rescued four pigs he kept in a pen. Video he shared on his Facebook page shows the hogs swimming out of their enclosure in a torrent of murky water. Coco said the pigs are now safe on higher ground.
“If I’d left them in the pen, they’d have drowned,” Coco said. “They were happy to see me.”
In New Orleans, Mayor Helena Moreno posted a video on Facebook describing relatively minor damage and cleanup efforts. Ahead of the storm, police prepared boats and set up barricades in flood-prone areas. They also opened sandbag distribution sites across Louisiana.
Elsewhere across the region, the storm still found new targets. Just across the Mississippi River in Avondale, Louisiana, a tornado wrecked four homes, Jefferson Parish spokeswoman Rachel Strassel said. Two people were hospitalized with minor injuries and later released.
Arthur’s remnants may be weakening, but the numbers and the accounts from residents and officials point to a single reality: the storm’s impact is still unfolding in places where rivers are cresting, homes are filling with water, and rescues are still underway.
Tropical Storm Arthur Gulf Coast flooding Louisiana emergency Mississippi flood warning Jourdan River evacuation Anchor Lake dam tornadoes flash flooding Perkinston rescue