More rain drenches Houston area, where floods have killed eight

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A fast-moving storm system brought more rain to the Houston area on Thursday after a torrential drenching this week led to floods that left eight people dead, deluged neighborhoods and caused major damage in America's fourth most populous city. The storms are expected to drop as much as 2 inches (5 cm) of rain in the Houston area on Thursday, adding to the vast pools of standing water in the low-lying city, forecasters said. In other parts of the region, an evacuation was ordered for parts of the city of Wharton, about 60 miles (100 km) southwest of Houston, due to flooding along the Colorado River caused by storms upstream earlier this week. After the storms on Thursday, there should be a break in the rain through Saturday, said Brian Kyle, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in its Houston-Galveston office. "Hopefully we will get a couple of days of rain-free weather," he said. The floods have damaged more than 1,100 residences, caused schools to shut and led to more than 1,200 water rescues. The high waters turned roads into lakes and snarled transport. The Houston region had a record-setting drenching that dumped as much as 18 inches (45 cm) on some places on Monday. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and the Houston Bureau; Editing by Matthew Lewis)