Officials say at least 88 people are dead and 70 are missing after Typhoon Rusa pummeled eastern and southern areas of the country over the weekend.

Rusa dumped up to 89 centimeters (36 inches) of rain within 30 hours in the eastern city of Gangneung, as winds tipped 200 kilometers an hour, before moving out of the peninsula Sunday afternoon.

Roads and railways were submerged, thousands of houses were flooded, leaving more than 25,000 homeless, while high waves swept away more than 200 ships and wrecked mooring facilities in 24 ports.

Meanwhile, Rusa has also killed scores of people in North Korea and left many missing or injured, the North's official KCNA news agency said on Monday.

Rescue workers, police and soldiers battled to reconnect roads, and clear tons of mud off flooded South Korean streets on Monday, with damage to properties expected to be the largest in history.

While property losses were initially estimated at over 260 million dollars, South Korea's disaster prevention headquarters says losses are heading towards the 300 million dollar mark.

But insurers say it will be at least a week before realistic estimates will be known.

Many neighborhoods in worst hit east coast region of Kangneung were cut off on Monday, without electricity or drinking water.

Tens of thousands of acres of farmland were reportedly ruined, triggering worries about a steep hike in food prices.

Red Cross and government authorities rushed blankets, instant noodles and other relief goods to flood victims. Soldiers and police were mobilized for the relief work.

Rail and highway traffic between Seoul and Busan, the nation's second largest city on the south coast, was partly open Monday after workers repaired damaged sections overnight.

Domestic air services, which had been crippled over the weekend, returned to normal Monday, airport officials said. Ferry services were partly restored.

Rusa, the Malaysian word for deer, was the most powerful typhoon to hit South Korea since Sarah in 1959, which left over 840 people dead or missing.

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- A tropical storm warning stretching from the north Florida coast to the Georgia-South Carolina border was downgraded to a watch Monday evening as Tropical Storm Edouard continued to drift off the coast.

As of 11 p.m., Edouard with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph was about 175 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. The storm was nearly stationary.

With the tropical storm warning being dropped, the watch now extends from Titusville, Florida, to the South Santee River in South Carolina.

"It's just drifting around," said Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center.

He said the storm was expected to remain "slow and erratic" in the coming days. The heaviest rain accompanying the storm is east of Edouard's eye, so the land areas closest to the storm have yet to be seriously affected.

Tropical storm watches were in effect from north of Titusville, Florida, to Fernandina Beach and from the Savannah River to the South Santee River in South Carolina.

Forecasts from St. Augustine, Florida, to Savannah, Georgia, called for thunderstorms and strong winds during the day Monday.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Dolly -- which rushed toward hurricane strength (74 mph) late last week before backing off short of the mark and turning north well out to sea -- continued to weaken Monday.

The storm was centered 550 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, moving north-northwest near 9 mph.

GALVESTON, Texas (CNN) -- The remnants of Tropical Storm Fay dumped heavy rains and spawned tornadoes Saturday as they moved inland over Texas.

The slow-moving, poorly defined storm was downgraded to a tropical depression Saturday morning.

Up to a foot of rain fell in Freeport and West Columbia, in coastal Brazoria County and 5 to 8 inches were reported in Matagorda and Wharton counties, according to The Associated Press. Storm surges in the warning area were expected to top 4 feet to 6 feet above normal.

Street flooding, coastal erosion and scattered power outages were reported in southeastern Texas, but the storm caused no serious injuries, The Associated Press reported.

Ankle-deep water damaged some homes in Wharton County, about 60 miles southwest of Houston.

Two tornadoes were reported there, according to The Associated Press -- one destroyed a mobile home near Bolig and another damaged a house in Hungerford. A tornado was also reported in Fort Bend County.

The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings for much of the southern part of the state, including Austin and San Antonio, where there was severe flooding in July.

Severe weather advisories were also issued for southern Louisiana and much of Mississippi.

Fay failed to become the Atlantic season's first full-fledged hurricane. Last June, the remnants of Tropical Storm Allison caused widespread flooding in the region, particularly in Houston. The deluge caused billions of dollars in damage and killed 22 people.

BEIJING, China -- Nine people were killed and three missing as Typhoon Sinlaku unleashed heavy rains and winds on China's southeast coast, state media said on Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to move to safety as torrential rains and high winds battered the area.

The official Xinhua news agency said Sinlaku hit land on Saturday evening near the coastal city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province -- China's cradle of private enterprise.

Disaster relief officials said nine people were dead and three missing, Xinhua said.

The Shanghai Morning Post newspaper quoted provincial officials as saying the typhoon had caused 310 million yuan ($37.45 million) in property damage and had knocked down at least 1,000 homes in Wenzhou.

Wenzhou, where about 300,000 people were forced to leave their homes, is home to tens of thousands of family firms that churn out everything from telecommunications circuits to cigarette lighters

Two people were missing in Taiwan after the storm hit the north of the island on its way to the coast of the mainland.

The China Meteorological Administration has said Sinlaku packed sustained winds of 133 kph (81 mph).

Up to 90 millimeters (3.5 inches) of rain inundated Zhejiang, Lu said.

Reservoirs and drainage systems were being monitored, according to Xinhua.

On Saturday, about 48,000 people working on fish and shellfish farms outside Wenzhou were moved to safety inside the city's seawall, Xinhua and China Central Television reported.

Children and elderly residents of Qidu, an island off Wenzhou with a population of 10,000, were evacuated to the mainland in anticipation of high tides, gales and torrential rains, the reports said.

An unspecified number of others were also evacuated from mountain villages vulnerable to flash floods and landslides.

The storm has since moved south to the coastal Fujian province and inland to Jiangxi province, officials said Sunday, but gave no details of injuries or damage.

Sinlaku -- named after a Micronesian goddess -- battered Japan's Okinawa island on Thursday, leaving five Philippine sailors missing and injuring at least 29 people.

MANTI, Utah (CNN) -- A tornado swept through central Utah on Sunday afternoon, ripping apart roofs, telephone poles and trees, and causing an estimated $1 million in damage, officials said.

The twister, captured on amateur video as a long, thin, brown funnel, moved through the Sanpete Valley near Manti about 1:49 p.m. (3:49 p.m. EDT), said Jeff Craven, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"The amazing thing: not an injury reported," said Lt. Rick Howe of the Sanpete County Sheriff's Office.

Howe said the twister touched down three times -- first southwest of town in a ranching area, then in the central part of Manti, and finally on the east side of town, where it caused extensive damage to homes.

"Where it touched down is just devastating," Howe said. "There are garages where the walls are gone and the roof is just sitting on the ground. There's a home where part of the home is simply missing. One house -- it didn't really do a lot of damage to the house, it just simply blew all the windows out."

He said the garage over one woman's car has disappeared, her car apparently OK and still parked in its place. In another instance, the twister destroyed a travel trailer, blowing the trailer one way and its axles and frames another way.

Sheriff's officials estimated the twister had winds of more than 113 mph.

The tornado brought with it golf-ball-size hail, Craven said.

At the second place where the tornado touched down, it struck Anderson Lumber, destroying the building and spewing lumber and plywood in all directions, Howe said.

"As I'm watching, I'm watching it just tear the roof off Anderson Lumber," said Carolyn Nordell, who lives a quarter-mile away. "It was like a Discovery Channel special on tornadoes."

"Big chunks" of the roof went in the air, and then the entire aluminum roof was rolled off the building like the top of a can of sardines. "I was in shock," she told CNN.

"We've got four 100-year-old pine trees in front of our house, and I'm looking in between the pine trees and you can see all this debris twirling up just 1,000 feet up towards the sky," she said.

"I see the funnel cloud go up into the sky, and then it went back down again, and then it went back up -- and then it was gone," she said.

Spotters for the local branch of the weather service reported seeing the funnel cloud move into the mountains to the east of Manti, where it weakened and disappeared, Craven said.

Nordell said her house was spared, but the tornado caused a quarter-mile swath of damage on the east side of State Highway 89.

Howe of the Sheriff's Department said volunteers had come in from neighboring towns, along with Red Cross officials, and power company workers were trying to restore electricity. A local store also donated food and drinks for the volunteers, he said.

NIMES, France -- At least 20 people have died and a further 12 are missing in the floods and storms that have hit southern France.

Three children are among those who have perished. Sixteen of those killed were mainly from the area around Nimes, famous for its Roman ruins.

Rescuers are searching for the missing residents in areas around the Gard region which has been hardest-hit by the violent weather system.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin toured the area by helicopter early on Tuesday and has pledged to release 10 million euros ($9.8m) of state aid for the region.

"I have come here to show emotion and national solidarity for all our compatriots, Raffarin said in Sommieres.

Train services remain suspended across parts of southern France and many roads are still closed.

About 500 rescue workers have been joined by 300 soldiers after authorities declared a state of alert.

Amphibious armoured cars were used to try to gain access to roads cut off by fast-flowing, waist-high water.

About 250 people were evacuated from their homes by helicopter while a further 900 were forced to flee to temporary shelters set up by the Red Cross and local authorities.

Electricity is gradually being restored but 15,000 homes remain without power, LCI television reported.

Fourteen of those killed were from the area around Nimes, a town with famous Roman ruins.

Emergency teams rushed overnight to the village of Aramon, near Nimes, after a dam burst its banks and left most of the village submerged, officials told The Associated Press.

"An embankment gave way and released a huge swell of water on the village," a spokesman for the local prefect's office told Reuters.

Rescue units said they are still searching for three residents.

Violent rainstorms that started on Sunday have caused rivers to burst their banks, forcing more than 1,000 people to flee their homes.

The weather improved on Tuesday morning and high-speed TGV trains running between Paris and Marseille resumed normal service after delays of several hours on Monday, the SNCF state railways said.

The TGV rail service between Nimes and Montpellier was suspended, along with trains between Montpellier and Marseille.

The floods are the second in two weeks to have hit France.

Last month about 150 homes were flooded around the northern town of Lille while a "mini-tornado" ripped through parts of the French Riviera, including Nice and Cannes.

The heavy rain in France follows disastrous flooding in Germany, Russia, Austria and the Czech Republic earlier this summer which killed at least 98 people and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Look west during the evening this month and you will see the brightest "star" become even brighter.

Venus will burn brighter each night in the coming weeks, making September a good opportunity to spot extremely rare astronomical treats: planetary pillars or dogs.

The sun and occasionally the moon are known to produce pillars and dogs, optical illusions formed in the atmosphere when either object is near the horizon.

Sunlight reflecting in the ice crystals of cirrus clouds, for example, can create glittering vertical shafts of light above or below the sun, known as sun pillars.

The same high-altitude ice crystals can produce sun dogs, or bright spots to the left and right of the low-lying sun and at about the same altitude.

Similar atmospheric conditions can make moon pillars and dogs, but Venus versions of the light tricks remain elusive.

Carol Lakomiak of Tomahawk, Wisconsin, captured perhaps the first Venus pillar on camera in April.

"Venus looked very strange," she told the Science@NASA Web site. "I saw beams of light jutting from the top and bottom of the planet, and there were moments when they were visible without optical aid."

If the evening star boasts pillars, astronomers speculate it has dogs as well, even though no one has yet reported seeing them.

Les Cowley, a retired physicist, suggests that venusian pillar and dog hunters search the night sky when cirrus clouds are near the horizon or when sun pillars or dogs were seen earlier in the evening.

The ideal time to look is between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m., when Venus approaches the horizon and the sky is dark.

Venus also starred in a more dependable celestial show this week. The planet teamed up with the crescent moon Monday evening. The two appeared quite close together, low in the western sky near the constellation Virgo.

Tropical Storm Gustav, which buffeted the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia, became the first hurricane of the 2002 Atlantic season on Wednesday.

The storm traveled up the eastern seaboard Wednesday and gathered enough punch to be declared a hurricane by the National Weather Service.

Hurricane Gustav, with 90 mph winds, was still 275 miles from land, south- southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, at 5 p.m. ET., heading northeast at 38 mph.

The Meteorological Service of Canada issued rainfall and wind warnings for much of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island as the hurricane was expected to merge with a low pressure system from the Great Lakes and become a massive post-tropical low pressure system.

Hurricane force winds extended 85 miles out from the center, while the tropical storm wind boundary reached out 260 miles.

Six earlier tropical storms failed to reach the 74 mph mark that indicates a hurricane.

National Weather Service forecasters in Miami said they expected little change in Gustav's strength over the next 24 hours, but said the storm's forward march should pick up.

The rain and wind should diminish later Thursday as the storm heads farther out to sea, Canadian forecasters said.

As a tropical storm, Gustav drove strong riptides and high surf onto the North Carolina and Virginia coasts, temporarily knocking power out on parts of North Carolina's Outer Banks.

The magnetic field lines in a coronal hole extend out into the solar wind rather than coming back down to the Sun's surface as they do in other parts of the Sun. Although they are usually located near the poles of the Sun, coronal holes can occur other places as well.

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- A tropical depression churning over the central Gulf of Mexico strengthened Friday morning and became Tropical Storm Hanna, the season's eighth named storm.

The National Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Apalachicola, Florida. A tropical storm warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected within the next 24 hours.

Hanna is expected to turn to the north later today, the Weather Service said. The center of the storm is expected to reach the coast within the warning area sometime Saturday morning.

A tropical storm watch remains in effect from east of Apalachicola to the Suwanee River in Florida.

Hanna's maximum sustained winds are near 45 mph with higher gusts. Additional strengthening is forecast during the next 24 hours, although Hanna is not expected to reach hurricane intensity prior to landfall.

At 4 a.m. CDT Friday, the center of the storm was 255 miles south-southwest of Pensacola, Florida. It was moving toward the northwest at about 8 mph.

Rainfall accumulations of 4 to 8 inches, with isolated higher amounts, can be expected near the path of Hanna, the Weather Service said. Large waves and dangerous rip currents will gradually increase across the watch and warning area on Friday.

Isolated tornadoes are possible, forecasters said, mainly to the east of where the center of Hanna makes landfall.

The first six storms of the Atlantic season all reached tropical storm strength but fell short of hurricane force 74 mph winds. But the seventh storm, Gustav, barreled offshore from the Atlantic seaboard and reached hurricane status near the Canadian east coast, far from its tropical origins.

Gustav spread heavy rain and high winds over Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland before heading off to the Labrador Sea, where it lost its hurricane status but remained a very large and strong extratropical storm.

Earlier this week, as a tropical storm, Gustav tormented North Carolina's Outer Banks.

PENSACOLA, Florida (CNN) -- Residents in drought-stricken states in the South monitored Tropical Storm Hanna on Friday, hoping the weak system would chug ashore with much needed rain.

Hanna already has dumped heavy rain in parts of the Florida Panhandle, a region that has an annual rainfall deficit of up to 13 inches. According to the National Weather Service, 4 to 5 inches of has fallen along the Florida coast in Wakulla and Franklin counties. Bands of rain also moved into north Georgia.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, about half the nation has been affected by drought this year and many residents in the storm's projected path welcomed the rain.

Common Misconceptions about Abrupt Climate Change
Several decades of scientific research have yielded significant advances in understanding the ocean's role in regulating Earth's climate. This summary covers some of the major points about abrupt climate change that are often misunderstood.

Are We on the Brink of a ‘New Little Ice Age?’
By WHOI scientists Terrence Joyce and Lloyd Keigwin

The authors discuss the paradox that global warming could, counterintuitively, instigate a new ‘Little Ice Age’ in the northern hemisphere.

August 06, 2002

Ice Age in Europe
WBUR’s Here & Now Interview with WHOI Scientist Ray Schmitt
(Click on "Listen to the Show" icon. Interview is approximately 14 minutes into the show.)

April 18, 2002
The Heat Before the Cold
A New York Times Op-Ed by WHOI Scientist Terrence Joyce

__________________

At least five people were swept away by the flooded Narmada river in India's Gujarat state, a senior government official said Thursday.

Scanning the universe with the most powerful orbiting observatories, scientists have discovered different types of black holes in the most unexpected places.

The findings could shed light on how galaxies form and interact with surrounding star groups as well as revamp theories on the evolution of the universe.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers confirmed for the first time the existence of medium-size black holes, according to NASA, which announced the findings Tuesday.

"Black holes are more common in the universe than previously thought," said Hubble scientist Roeland van der Marel. "These findings may be telling us something very deep about the formation of star clusters and black holes in the early universe."

Van der Marel and colleagues found the elusive class of black holes, previously only the subject of speculation, in the hearts of globular star clusters.

The thick star swarms formed billions of years ago, possess the oldest stars in the cosmos and hover around more conventional galaxies such as the Milky Way.

"These new data from the Hubble help us connect globular clusters to galaxies," said Michael Rich of the University of California, Los Angeles, another of the black hole hunters.

One of the black holes, about 32,000 light-years away in the globular cluster M15, has an estimated mass 4,000 times that of the sun.

To compare, small black holes peppered throughout the cosmos have only several times more mass than the sun.

The largest known ones, which lurk in the core of many galaxies, including the Milky Way, are thought to have millions or billions of times the mass of the sun.

"Medium-size black holes are an astronomical missing link," said Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Many scientists speculate that small black holes served as seeds for larger ones, merging with nearby peers into increasingly larger black holes in galactic cores over the eons.

"These intermediate-mass black holes that have now been found with Hubble may be the building blocks of supermassive black holes that dwell in the center of most galaxies," said Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin.

In another cosmic search with unforeseen results, scientists using the Chandra X-ray Observatory in space and the Carnegie telescope in Chile detected six times more active supermassive black holes than expected in a cluster of aging galaxies.

Such black holes are thought to be common in young galaxies, where the matter gobblers have plenty of material to satisfy their voracious appetites.

But astronomers presumed such dynamic black holes were rare in older galaxies, their supplies of gas and dust presumably depleted over the eons.

"This changes our view of galaxy clusters as the retirement homes for old and quiet black holes," astronomer Paul Martini said last week.

Martini and colleagues published their findings in the September 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Black holes are regions of space so staggeringly warped and dense that light cannot escape their grasp. Small ones are thought to be the collapsed remnants of stars much larger than the sun. Supermassive specimens are squeezed into areas about the size of our solar system.

Stanford University researchers theorize that the universe could experience a cosmic crunch in 10 billion or 20 billion years.

Recent cosmological observations have suggested that the universe will expand at an increasingly rapid rate for at least 100 billion years and perhaps enlarge forever.

But according to a new scientific model, the universe will slow its pace of acceleration and then experience a fatal contraction.

"The universe may be doomed to collapse and disappear. Everything we see now, and at a much larger distance that we cannot see, will collapse into a point smaller than a proton," said Andrei Linde, who conducted the research with Renata Kallosh, his wife and physics colleague at Stanford.

"The standard vision at the moment is that the universe is speeding up, so we were surprised to find that a collapse could happen with such a short amount of time," Linde said.

Linde is one of the pioneers of Inflation theory, an increasingly popular revision of the proposed Big Bang.

First advanced in the 1980s, it suggests that the universe rapidly inflated into a much larger cosmos only a fraction of a moment after it began.

Will the universe expand forever and become cool and dark, collapse into nothingness in a cosmic crunch, or remain in equilibrium between the forces of gravity and expansion?

Inflationary theory predicts a "flat" universe, or one where the competing forces pulling and contracting the universe stay balanced.

The debate, by no means settled among cosmologists, hinges on the role of mysterious and theoretical phenomena known as dark matter and dark energy.

Throw into the mix such notions as string theory, supergravity, extra dimensions and multiple universes, and the question becomes even more muddled.

Yet looking at some of the best work in the field of dark energy, Linde and Kallosh concluded it would change from a positive to a negative force.

Their cosmological model, described in related reports on www.arXiv.org, a Web site sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Cornell University, generated another unexpected prediction: the universe, estimated to be about 14 billion years old, is already middle-aged.

"Physicists have known that dark energy could become negative and the universe could collapse sometime in the distant future, perhaps a trillion years," Linde said. "But now we see that we might be not in the beginning, but in the middle of the life cycle of our universe."

One noted scientist had a lukewarm response to the hypothesis.

"Because their proposal is based on rather specific models and assumptions and their is no current evidence for it, I would say it logically possible, but not compelling," said physicist Paul Steinhardt.

The Princeton University professor helped developed an alternative cosmological theory that proposes that the universe began by colliding with another universe, with both existing in a higher dimensional medium.

"They are only attempting to explain the evolution of the universe between now and the collapse, whereas we showed how this can be embedded in a larger cyclic scenario that leads to an eternal universe," Steinhardt said.

Linde concedes that the work is raw and that astronomy is an inexact science at best, and known for continuous revisions. Recalling an ongoing joke among cosmologists, the Stanford University professor quipped:

"Astrophysicists are always in error but never in doubt."

MOSCOW, Russia - An estimated 110 people are feared dead after an avalanche roared through villages and resort camps in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the tragedy a "major disaster."

An emergency official at the scene said on Saturday the village of Nizhny Karmadon in the Caucasus mountain range, where about 50 people lived, was almost entirely covered in ice and that there was little chance of finding anyone alive there.

North Ossetia's Prime Minister, Mikhail Shatalov, told ITAR-Tass news agency about 100 people are feared to have perished.

A spokesman for the North Ossetia Presidential Press Service, Lev Dzugaev, said the avalanche occurred at 9 p.m. local time Friday, covering the 12 houses in the village of 20 people.

Another 10 visitors are also missing.

Actor Sergei Bodrov Junior, the son of a well-known Moscow film director, and 23 of his 25-member film crew, who were filming a movie in the area, are also unaccounted for, a spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Ministry said.

After wiping out Nizhny Karmadon, the avalanche swept through a number of local resorts, where authorities predicted other victims may be found.

The avalanche came to rest near the entrance to the Karmadon Gorge, blocking it and raising the danger of flooding.

At that point, Dzugaev said, the ice and debris are approximately 90 metres thick.

The huge lump of ice, which Interfax news agency put at two to three million cubic metres (70 to 100 million cubic feet) in volume, clipped the village of Karmadon as it thundered along its path.

"There are 15 homes buried in Karmadon and about 30 people may live in these homes," an emergencies ministry official told Reuters.

Interfax news agency quoted local officials as saying the area now faced the threat of flooding since the main river had been blocked by the ice-fall.

A 40-member rescue team, accompanied by dogs trained to detect people entombed in debris, was crossing rough terrain to reach the disaster site on foot and 100 more people are set to join the search party later on Saturday.

Search and rescue helicopters flew over the area from first light to detect signs of survivors from the air.

The Russian Emergency Ministry in Moscow has sent rescuers with sniffer dogs to search for buried survivors.

The North Ossetia region lies on the northern edge of the Caucasus range on Russia's border with Georgia.

JACKSON, Mississippi (CNN) -- The much-feared Isidore whimpered out over land Thursday, but the heavy rain it brought left swaths of flooding in Mississippi and Louisiana. The rain continued into the evening in the northern part of the Magnolia state as the system moved into Tennessee.

Middle and west Tennessee will spend the night under a flood watch after Isidore dumped up to 6 inches of rain on the state.

Two people in Mississippi were killed as a result of the tropical storm. Amy Carruth, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said a 67-year-old man in Henderson Point died of a heart attack early Thursday morning. Rescue crews were unable to reach his home due to high waters and flooded roads in the area.

A 31-year-old man in Scott County died Thursday afternoon when he drove his car off a highway to dodge a falling tree in the heavy rain, Carruth said. No other serious injuries were reported in the state.

Isidore's winds have fizzled into a tropical depression, but forecasters warn life-threatening floods are still a risk from the 4 to 8 inches of rain expected near the path of the storm system as it heads north to the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

Isolated tornadoes are also possible overnight in portions of central and northern Alabama and parts of central Georgia.

Officials in water-logged Mississippi fear their troubles will worsen when the rain falling in the north runs down river.

'Worst flood they have seen in probably 20 years'

"The Gulf Coast has really been hit hard as far as flooding and water damage," Carruth said. "But over the next 24 hours we're really concerned about river flooding -- the storm is moving upstate, upstream and what is upstream has got to come downstream."

"We're looking at more flooding by this weekend," she said. "We're not talking about something that's going to stop today when the rain stops."

Some 10 to 12 inches of rain had fallen, with an additional 8 to 10 more expected said Carruth, who described the precipitation as "unbelievable."

"We've got two counties -- Pike and Lincoln -- their emergency management directors said this is the worst flood they have seen in probably 20 years," said Carruth.

Carruth said those directors called her office from boats to report the status of their counties Thursday morning -- the rising water had forced them from their offices.

Five shelters were still open in the state late Thursday afternoon. Some residents returning to flood-damaged homes found they had no electricity.

Carruth said damage assessment teams would fan out across the state Friday to survey the ravages of Isidore.

In neighboring Louisiana, where the storm hit first, Federal Emergency Management Director Joe Allbaugh toured hard-hit areas in a helicopter with Gov. Mike Foster. The state has asked for a federal disaster declaration so it can begin receiving federal aid to help residents.

In Delacroix, a fishing town east of New Orleans, Susan Serpas told The Associated Press, "I don't know whose they are, but I've got three recliner chairs in my yard."

Southern Louisiana 'getting back to normal'

Deborah Conrad of Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness said a preliminary survey shows about 2,300 structures in the state were flooded and are inaccessible. She said 38 shelters were still open statewide and about 2,500 residents were in them.

"Most of the south of the state is getting back to normal," she said. "People are going back to their homes."

That includes most of the 1,500 residents of Grand Isle, who evacuated Tuesday. The only road linking the resort island with the mainland was closed when it flooded. About 50 people, mostly firefighters and police officers, remained on the island.

"We had to do some relocations last night of residents who had decided to stay but then got worried when they saw the water rising," said fire official Laine Landry, adding that the entire island was still without power.

About one mile of Grand Isle's protection levee on the beach was lost when Isidore swept ashore, Landry said, and many houses on the island were flooded.

New Orleans' main expressway, Interstate 10, was reopened Thursday night, police said, after flooding Wednesday submerged the road and several cars. Patrick Evans, director of communications for Mayor Ray Nagin, said there were no reports of serious injuries or accidents.

He said forecasters called for "gorgeous" weather for the weekend.

"We want people to come here and have fun," Evans said.

CNN Correspondent Jeff Flock contributed to this report.