Traffic flows through standing water on North Frontage Road after an early-morning downpour.(The Vicksburg Post/C. TODD SHERMAN)

[11/28/01]Intense rain is expected again tonight and perhaps early Thursday, but then the deluge that has brought nearly 5 inches in four days should come to an end.

“Once we get to about midnight Thursday it will start to clear off and get cooler,” said Eric Martello of the National Weather Service in Jackson.

Martello said Warren County, which officially received 1.99 inch of rain in the 24 hours ending at 7 a.m., will remain under a flood watch through tonight.

“We were dry there for a long time but it caught up with us,” Martello said.

The Vicksburg Water Treatment Plant at the E.W. Haining Industrial Complex has recorded 4.81 inches of rain since Saturday and not a drop before that in November.

L.W. “Bump” Callaway, director of the Warren County Emergency Management Agency, said this morning that no flooding had been reported in the county.

“We are in real good shape as far as our local situation,” he said.

Callaway said his office was preparing for another round of severe storms today and Thursday.

“We are always susceptible to flash flooding because we are here in the hills,” he said.

Officials in Madison Parish, Claiborne, Issaquena and Sharkey counties all said this morning that they were not aware of flash flooding or any severe damage in their areas.

Separately, an 18-wheeler that jackknifed into the median Tuesday morning on Interstate 20 about a mile west of Edwards, kept traffic moving past at a crawl for about nine hours.

Jan Schaefer, deputy director of public affairs with the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol, said the delay could be attributed to difficulty removing the truck from the median.

“First they brought in air bags to try and lift it out, but that didn’t work,” she said. “Later in the day there were two wreckers brought in and they got it out successfully.”

Schaefer said in addition to trouble removing the rig it was also leaking diesel fuel.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality was called in to clean up the spilled diesel, which also added to the traffic jam, Schaefer said.

Schaefer said she had no information on the cause of the accident. No injuries were reported in the truck itself or in associated wrecks in the lines of traffic. Inmates from Hinds County were brought by bus to the scene to unload the overturned trailer.

In Warren County, seven wrecks were reported from Tuesday morning until this morning and 15 were reported in the city in the same time frame, said Jamee Carter, Vicksburg Police spokesman.