HOUSTON — Floodwaters deepened across much of Texas on Tuesday as storms dumped almost a foot more of rain on the Houston area, stranding hundreds of motorists and inundating the famously congested highways that serve the nation’s fourth-largest city.
Meanwhile, the search went on for about a dozen people who were still missing, including a group that disappeared after a vacation home was swept down a river and slammed into a bridge.
Several more fatalities were reported — four in Houston and four more in Central Texas. That brought to 17 the number of people killed by the holiday weekend storms in Texas and Oklahoma.
Similar search efforts unfolded just south of the Texas-Mexico border, where crews tried to track down the missing and assessed damage in the city of Ciudad Acuna after a tornado killed 13 people Monday.
In Houston, the water rose sharply overnight as about 11 more inches of rain fell, much of it in a six-hour period. By Tuesday evening, most rivers had receded back within their banks.