'Life-Threatening' Flooding Swamps Pensacola, Florida

The latest weather news following a chain of severe weather running rampant across the South and Midwest, the Florida Panhandle and other parts of the Gulf Coast were hit with torrential rainfall and "life-threatening" flooding late Tuesday.

The storm left people stranded in their cars and homes, waiting for rescuers to circumvent impassable roads. Authorities said flash flooding was responsible for the death of one person in Pensacola, Fla. whose car was submerged in flood water.

More than two feet of rain fell in a 26-hour time span in Pensacola, according to one rain gauge posted on Twitter, and lightning struck the town 6,000 times in just 15 minutes.

"We've seen pictures that people are posting with water halfway up their doors, front doors," meteorologist Phil Grigsby in New Orleans said this morning, according to The Associated Press. "It's going to be a big cleanup, looks like."

Especially with Interstate 10 closed for several miles, Grigsby adds that they are planning aerial rescues for stranded citizens.

Police and fire officials in Farmville, N.C., for instance, undertook 10 "water rescues" of motorists in stranded vehicles and evacuated residents of several homes waist deep in flood water, Police Chief Donnie Greene told NBC station WITN.

A local state of emergency was declared in Escambia County, where Pensacola resides.

"It's gotten to the point where we can't send EMS and fire rescue crews out on some 911 calls because they can't get there," county spokesman Pearson said Wednesday morning, the AP reported.

Pearson said emergency officials had described it was the worst flooding they had seen in 30 years.

This flooding is the latest storm system rocking the South, which began in Arkansas and Oklahoma. At least 35 people have been killed in storms that started Sunday and spread from Oklahoma to North Carolina.

Meteorologist Megan Glaros of CBS Chicago station WBBM-TV reports that the heavy rain and possible flooding will continue in the Panhandle and along the East Coast Wednesday into Thursday, the AP reported.