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Tropical Depression Imelda churned over the Houston area on Wednesday, soaking some areas with more than 10 inches of rain and bringing the threat of heavy rainfall and flash flood watches to southeast Texas and extreme southwest Louisiana.

The storm, which was slowly moving northeast through the eastern Texas region, was expected to bring rainfall of five to 10 inches through Friday, and could deliver 20 to 25 inches to some places, according to the Weather Prediction Center on Wednesday afternoon. Parts of southwest Louisiana could see four to 8 inches of rain, with isolated totals of 10 inches. The rainfall could result in “significant to life-threatening flash floods,” the center said.

“Houston’s not seeing a lot of the heavy rainfall that it could be seeing,” Scott Overpeck, meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Houston/Galveston office, said in a Wednesday morning interview. “Higher rainfall amounts may hold off till overnight as the system moves north.”

Jeff Lindner, director of the Flood Control District for Harris County, said Wednesday morning that residents should stay apprised as the storm keeps moving. Later in the afternoon, the district said on Twitter that some of the creek and bayou water levels were slowly falling.

“Takeaway message this morning is we’re about 24 hours or halfway through this 48-hour event,” he said. “Even though we’ve done well overnight, we haven’t had any significant amounts of flooding or impacts, we can’t let our guard down just yet.”

Imelda is the latest storm to hit a rain-weary region that has been battered by major storms and catastrophic flooding in recent years, from the so-called Tax Day floods of April 2016 to Hurricane Harvey two summers ago, which lingered over the city as a tropical storm. Heavy rain, high winds and tornadoes leveled entire neighborhoods, and some residents are still recovering.

Emma Wood, whose home was recently rebuilt after flooding during Harvey, had not yet unpacked in her new home by the time Imelda rolled in.

“I’m still looking at all of these boxes,” she said on Wednesday.

Ms. Wood, 81, had lived in her three-bedroom home in southern Houston for decades when it flooded as high as her shin in 2017. The house reeked of mildew afterward, she recalled, and floodwater left the floor warped, so she had to remember to step up and down when walking into her kitchen.

“It was dangerous for me,” she said.

When she had the chance to tear the house down and start anew, through a city recovery program, she jumped at the chance. She got the keys to her new house just last month.

As the rain dripped on and off Wednesday, she said she was less worried than in past storms, because her new home had been elevated several feet above the flood plain.

“There’s no sense of getting tired of them, because it’s the good Lord’s work,” she said of the repeated storms. “If it’s going to rain or flood, we just have to bear with whatever happens.”

Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston said that even though conditions overnight had been relatively uneventful, residents should stay prepared.

“We just have to be mindful that we’re living in a day and time where it doesn’t have to be a hurricane, it can simply be a weather system that can evolve very quickly into something much worse,” he said to reporters, according to The Houston Chronicle.

Glenn LaMont, deputy emergency management coordinator for Brazoria County, just south of Houston, said Wednesday afternoon that the rain had dropped significantly. “We’ve got very houston astros little rain falling in the county,” he said. “Drainage is catching up. We’ve had a few residential roads, a few small roads impacted.”

Mr. LaMont said that the county had not received any reports of flooding in homes and that scattered showers were expected Wednesday evening and Thursday night.

The weather service’s Houston/Galveston office said online early Wednesday morning that in preliminary precipitation totals, Brazoria County had received more than 10 inches of rain while parts of Galveston County had gotten eight to nine inches. A flood watch continued for parts of southeast Texas through Thursday morning, it said.

The storm, which had been moving at five miles per hour after making landfall near Freeport, Tex., on Tuesday evening, was about 80 miles north northeast of Houston on Wednesday afternoon with maximum sustained winds of about 30 miles per hour, according to the weather prediction center.

Several school districts canceled classes, while universities in the area delayed opening.

The Galveston Independent School District and the Texas City Independent School District canceled classes on Wednesday. Several other districts across the Houston area issued closing announcements including the Brazosport Independent School District, the Dayton Independent School District and the Alvin Independent School District.

Texas Southern University and the University of Houston chose to delay classes until 10 a.m.

Hundreds of miles to the east, Humberto, a Category 3 hurricane, was expected to wallop Bermuda on Wednesday with heavy winds, according to the National Hurricane Center.

“The core of Humberto is expected to pass just to the northwest and north of Bermuda later” Wednesday night, the center said.

Storm surge and heavy waves could bring coastal flooding on Wednesday night and Thursday along Bermuda’s southern coast, the center said.

Farther southeast of Humberto, the hurricane center said that Tropical Storm Jerry was strengthening and was expected to become a hurricane when it approaches the Leeward Islands on Friday.

Mihir Zaveri and Matthew Sedacca contributed reporting.

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