Floodwater begins receding in Indiana as windy storms move into New York

MONTICELLO, Ind. -- Troy Nice looked out over the swollen Tippecanoe River and the houses surrounded by its spilled water. He wondered how his own home had fared as the water began its slow retreat on Wednesday.

"I didn't think it would come up like this," said Nice, 39. "I managed to get my guitar, dog, and I got my cell phone charger, and some little things. This is the worst it's ever been."

Nice returned to this stretch of river a day after fleeing the rising water with hundreds of other residents. The Tippecanoe reached record levels along the 20-mile stretch from a storm that dumped as much as 7 inches of rain in parts of northern Indiana.

The National Weather Service estimated that it could be three days before the Tippecanoe retreats within its banks.

Seven deaths in all were blamed on flooding and tornadoes across the Midwest as unseasonable temperatures fueled severe weather Monday and Tuesday.

Roads were still blocked by water in the Monticello area, said White County emergency management director Gordon Cochran. He had no immediate estimate for how many homes were damaged.

About 200 homes were damaged in nearby Carroll County, according to the estimates of Dave McDowell, the county's emergency management director.

Gov. Mitch Daniels viewed the flooding from a helicopter Wednesday, stopping in Monticello and talking with local officials in a county government building where there were still cots and blankets used by evacuees the night before.

"We're talking about a big area here, but even a few miles south of here they seem to have escaped significant damage," Daniels said.

Utility workers were trying to repair a leak in a gas main that runs beneath the Tippecanoe River. Some 400 customers in Burnettsville were without service, said Jim Fitzer, spokesman for Northern Indiana Public Service Co.

"We have crews on site monitoring the gas, and there are no dangerous levels of gas in that area," he said.

As remnants of the storm system moved eastward, thunderstorms early Wednesday knocked out electricity to at least 127,000 homes and businesses in western New York. Gusts as high as 85 mph were clocked at the Thousand Islands Bridge in northern New York, the National Weather Service said.

An empty U.S. Airways regional airliner briefly lifted off the ground at the Rochester, N.Y., airport as wind gusted to 75 mph. The 50-passenger aircraft's tail and front landing gear were damaged, airport officials said.

The same system produced wind gusts to 63 mph during the night in Ohio, where at least 50,000 customers were blacked out Wednesday.

Flood warnings remained in effect Wednesday in parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri, the weather service said.

In Illinois, the state sent 10,000 sandbags to Mahomet in Champaign County, where the Sangamon River was overflowing its banks.

Elsewhere, search teams set out in a snowstorm Wednesday in the southwest Colorado mountains to look for two snowboarders missing since Saturday, but helicopters were grounded. "You can't see; it's snowing, the wind is blowing," Mineral County sheriff's spokeswoman Sandy Kroll said.

The area got more than 4 feet of snow during the weekend.

Spokane, Wash., was expected to get heavy snow again Thursday after more than 7 inches fell Tuesday and Wednesday, a record amount. The city declared a "condition red" snow emergency Wednesday, meaning crews will be plowing snow 24 hours a day, seven days a week until they remove the snow from streets.

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Associated Press writers Emily Udell and Tom Davies in Indianapolis, Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark., Ben Dobbin in Rochester, N.Y., and Michael Virtanen in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.