GAYS MILLS, Wis. (AP) -- Another wave of severe thunderstorms pounded the southern half of Wisconsin Sunday, creating flash floods, forcing evacuations and dredging up nightmares of flooding not even a year past.
Reports of flooding came in across a 150-mile swath of the state, from the Milwaukee suburbs of Oak Creek and Cudahy to parts of Crawford, Dane and Vernon counties.
Residents in low-lying areas of Elroy and Mauston in Juneau County were told to evacuate due to high water and mud slides near the swollen Wisconsin River.
Forecasts called for more rain, and state emergency officials urged people across southwestern Wisconsin to be ready to run, too. Vernon County got 8.2 inches of rain between 9 a.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday.
The storms triggered horrible memories for people in the rural area still struggling to recover from flash-flooding last August. Those floods sent entire houses sliding into highways, washed out roads and forced many to flee in the middle of the night.
On Sunday, blinding sheets of rain transformed the Kickapoo River into an angry rush of taffy-colored water and officials
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Gravel driveways and dirt roads became avalanches. Great muddy lakes covered farm fields. Bluffsides disintegrated, covering roads with trees, rocks and branches.
The area's small towns have become isolated islands. Roads leading into La Farge were all but blocked, Viola was unreachable and low-lying areas of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills were underwater again, officials said.
"It's exhausting," said Barb Edge, 50, who lives on the edge of the Kickapoo in Soldiers Grove. She said her house suffered $9,000 worth of damage in August. "We just got the damage repaired. It's just horrible."
In Gays Mills, a village of 625 people about 105 miles northwest of Madison, the Kickapoo covered the village park and was still rising. Residents scrambled to fill sandbags and barricade downtown businesses and basement windows; the river flooded the village's downtown last August.
