At least 10 people, including a child, were dead after a severe rainstorm pounded a large section of the South and left hundreds of thousands of people without power on Sunday morning and communities contending with flash flooding.
In Tennessee, the National Weather Service in Memphis issued a flash flood emergency on Sunday afternoon after a levee along the community of Rives failed, causing “rapid onset flooding” there and in the surrounding areas.
“Get to high ground now,’’ the Weather Service warned on social media. Rives, which is northeast of Memphis, has a population about 300. The Tipton County Fire Department said that about 200 people needed to be rescued.
Steve Carr, the Obion County mayor, declared a state of emergency on Sunday in response to the severe flooding. He said on Facebook that there would be mandatory evacuations in Rives because of “the rising water, no electricity, and freezing temperature creating a life-threatening situation.”
Some evacuees were taken to the hospital, according to the Obion County Emergency Management Agency.
Mr. Carr added that other low-lying areas, including the town of Kenton about 13 miles south of Rives, also faced “imminent threats” because of the flooding.
The Rives fire chief, Campbell Rice, pleaded on a Facebook livestream for residents to evacuate immediately. He said he had responded to floods every year for the past 35 years, but “this one is totally different from the ones in the past.”
The levee was designed to hold back the Obion River, a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for maintaining the levee.
Kentucky was hit particularly hard by the rain and at least nine people died there because of the storms, Gov. Andy Beshear said on Sunday. He said at a news conference in the afternoon that officials expected the death toll to rise.
Governor Beshear said there had been more than 1,000 rescues and there were more than 300 road closures.
The governor said weather conditions were still dangerous in the state. And a snowstorm was expected to bring several inches of snow on Tuesday night.
In Kentucky, a woman and her 7-year-old child died after the mother’s vehicle was swept away during flash flooding in Hart County, said Anthony Roberts, the county’s coroner.
Donald K. Nicholson, 72, of Manchester, Ky., died when he was driving on Kentucky Route 80, said Jason Abner, the Clay County coroner. Mr. Nicholson got out of his vehicle when the road became impassable and was swept several hundred feet, Mr. Abner said.
Mr. Beshear said three other people also died in floodwaters and two people died in motor vehicle accidents. He confirmed another weather-related death in Pike County on Sunday evening.
In Georgia, a person was killed in Atlanta after an “extremely large tree,” fell on a house during a thunderstorm early on Sunday, Capt. Scott Powell of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department told reporters.
In Virginia, there were over 150 water rescues and evacuations on Sunday, according to a news release from the governor’s office. The James River and other waterways reached their highest levels since 1977, according to the release.
The weather system spawned at least two tornadoes over the weekend, one in Alabama on Saturday, four in Mississippi on Saturday evening and another in Tennessee on Sunday, according to the Weather Service.
L.D. Mosley, a 70-year-old retired coal company electrician, had just finished fixing his shed when a wall of mud, rocks and trees slammed into it on Saturday. The landslide came off the mountain behind his home in Hindman, Ky., which is about 130 miles southeast of Lexington.
Mr. Mosley estimated that as much as 80 tons of earth covered his property.
“I’m just so heartsick of it right now, I’d like to just throw my hands up and leave,” Mr. Mosley said.
In the nearby community of Krypton, Ky., Scott McReynolds had lost power at his home and was stuck inside because of the water at the end of his driveway.
Mr. McReynolds, the executive director of a housing nonprofit called the Housing Development Alliance, is involved in a statewide effort to move vulnerable residents out of floodplains and onto former strip mines that provide flat land for building new neighborhoods.
He has lived in the region since 1992 and said that recent floods have been overwhelming.
“The flood in 2021 was awful, and in 2022 it was unbelievable,” Mr. McReynolds said. “Now we’re doing it again.”
In Hazard, a city about 14 miles southeast of Krypton, the Kentucky River had crested at 30.5 feet, the highest since 1984.
Hazard’s downtown coordinator, Bailey Richards, said more than 40 businesses had flooded since the rain began on Saturday, including a diner and the fire and police departments.
“It got so much higher than expected,” Ms. Richards said. “Most of the areas I didn’t consider could possibly flood ended up flooding.”
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