Two days of drenching rains in Texas waned Sunday, allowing closed highways to reopen as the remnants of once-Category 5 Hurricane Patricia moved east and threatened to soak other states.
"There's some very intense rainfall still to come across Louisiana and Mississippi," said Danielle Banks, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel.
More than a foot of rain had fallen in the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson since Friday, while areas around Houston saw 9 inches, according to the National Weather Service. To the south, Austin and surrounding areas picked up about 5 inches of rain, allowing firefighters to contain the last of the Hidden Pines fire, which had burned more than 4,500 acres, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
In Dallas, a freight train derailed on waterlogged tracks Saturday, but no one was injured. And a driver slipped into a ditch filled with water, but he survived. Paul Nelson told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth that his SUV "just wouldn't move."
"There was a lot of water," Nelson said.
In San Antonio, a man who was swept away by floodwaters while chasing his dog on Friday was found alive on Saturday, walking naked on the side of a road, NBC station WOAI reported.
The rain in Texas began to lighten Sunday morning, and the National Weather Service listed most of the state's flood warnings and watches. But the Texas Department of Transportation warned that the 35 roadways that had taken on water could remain dangerous, even as many of the roads reopened.
Southeastern Texas, Louisiana and parts of Mississippi were still at risk for torrential downpours Sunday and were under flash flood warnings, according to the NWS.
"Many of these locations are going to pick up additional rain not only as we go further into the day on Sunday, but also we're focused in on problematic areas for Sunday night and also going into Monday," Banks said.
The storm could bring damaging winds and possible tornadoes to parts of southern Louisiana before moving into Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle.
The wet and wild weather was a result of a low pressure system that had combined with leftover moisture from Hurricane Patricia, which swept through southwestern Mexico, tearing out trees and toppling homes, on Friday and Saturday.
While still at sea, Patricia was deemed the strongest hurricane ever on record in the Western Hemisphere, but it decreased substantially in strength when it made landfall and didn't cause the mass destruction that was expected.
Patricia delivered 165-mph winds upon landfall Friday night, but no deaths have so far been reported.
