Over the past few days, more than 30 tornadoes have shredded a vast stretch of the central United States, and relentless rain has pushed creeks and streams beyond their banks. In Kentucky, floodwaters swept away a 9-year-old boy, making him at least the eighth person killed by the violent series of storms.
Officials in many storm-battered places beseeched residents on Friday to hunker down and stay vigilant, rather than begin assessing the destruction or cleaning up. The worst may be yet to come as a forecast of heavy rains with the potential for more tornadoes and floods extends through the weekend.
“We have a lot of bad weather coming still,” Michael Mueller, the county judge and executive in Franklin County, Ky., said on Friday. “It’s very, very dangerous out there.”
The storm had stalled on Friday over a region reaching from Arkansas to Michigan, places where residents and officials were painfully familiar with the perils and hardship that can come from tornadoes and overflowing waterway.
The reminders came as the death toll slowly climbed. In Tennessee, at least five people were killed by the storms, including a teenage girl, and several inches of rain that fell throughout Thursday caused major floods and shut down roadways.
Garry Moore, a fire chief in Whitewater, Mo., with nearly 30 years serving the local fire protection district, was killed on Wednesday while responding to tornado damage. A 27-year-old man in Danville, Ind., was killed after coming into contact with downed power lines. And in Frankfort, Ky., the body of the 9-year-old boy was found after he had been carried off by floodwaters while walking to a school bus stop, officials said.
The anguish was also still fresh in Kentucky, where flash floods in the eastern part of the state killed 11 people and displaced hundreds earlier this year.
Gov. Andy Beshear pleaded for people to take the “rising and standing water seriously” and to avoid unnecessary risks on flooded roadways. “It’s how we lost too many people in the past,” Mr. Beshear said. “Just turn around.”
In Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, people were venturing out on Friday to gather supplies and pick up sandbags. But mostly they simply waited, uncertain of what the fate would be for their homes and their communities, with some looking to the rising waters with a sense of unease and resignation.
“There’s not much you can do,” said Janice Stegall, the town clerk in the small Indiana community of Medora, situated on the White River’s east fork, where waters were expected to rise to a near-record of 19 feet on Sunday.
In Paducah, Ky., the increasing level of the Ohio River prompted the authorities to begin installing floodgates on Friday, they said, a measure local officials last resorted to in 2019 when severe flooding threatened the city.
In Hopkinsville, Ky., a city of roughly 30,000 people northwest of Nashville, the first hours of daylight on Friday were spent rescuing about a dozen residents who were trapped in the rising water, officials said.
The flooding on Friday and the dangers that could still come were fueled by widespread rain from eastern Texas to Illinois that was expected to continue through the weekend. The National Weather Service warned of a flash flood event that could endanger lives and break records across the Lower Ohio Valley and the Mid-South to Lower Mississippi Valley.
In New Madrid, Mo., a city along the Mississippi River at risk from rising water levels, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers brought in sandbag-filling machines, to cheers from city workers.
The mayor, Nick White, said on Friday that he worried that the weekend had the potential to bring one of the worst floods in the city’s history and that forecasters had said the river could rise over 40 feet and stay at the level for as long as two weeks.
As daunting as the threat was, he believed that New Madrid, a city of about 2,600 perched atop a horseshoe bend in the Mississippi River, was perhaps more prepared than ever. “We’ve got backup generators, we’ve got a backup pump,” Mr. White said, adding, “We’ve been really proactive versus reactive.”
In Boston, Ky., roughly 35 miles south of Louisville, Bruce Gooden could see the water creeping up as he cut hair at his barbershop near Lick Creek.
The heavy rain swelling the creek could not flow into the nearby Rolling Fork River, which was already above flood stage. Mr. Gooden, 63, had seen the water rise before, but hour after hour of heavy downpours and cracking lightning fed a sense of doom.
“The water has never made it into my shop before, but I fear it will happen this time,” he said as he kept clipping. He had sand piled in the bed of his truck, he said, and was ready to bag and stack it if the water rose high enough.
“I’ll play it by ear,” he said. “I’ll stay open as long as I can.”
On Friday, the bull’s-eye for the heaviest rain that could lead to dangerous flooding fell within a large portion of Arkansas and a sliver of southern Missouri, including the Ozarks. Forecasters expect the threat to spread into the boot heel of Missouri and western Kentucky and Tennessee on Saturday.
“I think, unfortunately, the next 24 to 36 hours is when we’re going to start to see the heaviest rain totals of this event,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said on Friday morning.
The risk of severe thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes is expected to increase on Saturday in a zone that includes Memphis, Little Rock, Ark., and Jackson, Miss. Powerful and damaging wind gusts and large hailstones — perhaps bigger than limes — are more likely in this area than tornadoes.
As people made preparations for possible flooding, anxiety among customers at a grocery store in Boston, Ky., seemed to be rising as gradually as the water.
“You have to be ahead of it and aware of it, make plans,” said Steve Fox, 68, whose house is on a hill nearby, high enough that he believes he is safe from flooding. But the hill could become an island, he said, if the water rises enough. “The water will probably get over the roads, and I’ll be cut off for a few days,” he said.
For those around long enough to remember, a flood in 1997 — one of the deadliest disasters in Kentucky history — is the yardstick against which events like this are measured, and residents fear the coming days could bring something comparable.
Denise Baker has worked at the Boston Food Mart, where Mr. Fox was shopping, for 31 years. In all that time, floodwater has never breached her store, she said, but she knew that was no guarantee that it would not happen this time.
She knows how much the community relies on the store, and she was determined to maintain that lifeline — even if the store were to become accessible only by boat.
“We’re going to try to keep the store open as long as possible,” she said.
Jenny Gross, Mitch Smith and Sara Ruberg contributed reporting.
