At least nine 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 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. Several area fire departments deployed crews to help. The Tipton County Fire Department said that about 200 people needed to be rescued.
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 eight people died there because of the storms, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said at a news conference on Sunday. He said that officials expected the death toll to rise.
He 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.
In addition to the flash floods, riverbank flooding was going to be significant, he said. Wind gusts of 30 to 45 miles per hour on Sunday, combined with the wet ground, was uprooting trees and sending limbs crashing down.
A snowstorm was expected to bring several inches of the 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.
Amid the Trump administration’s efforts to drastically cut the federal work force, Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, thanked the meteorologists at the National Weather Service.
“The National Weather Service is a critical partner in our response to all of these events,” the governor said. “We need a well-funded National Weather Service.”
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 had been more than 100 rescues as of Sunday morning, said Lauren Opett, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.
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.”
Reporting was contributed by Judson Jones, Isabella Kwai, Adeel Hassan, Nazaneen Ghaffar, Johnny Diaz and Livia Albeck-Ripka.
