4 killed 180 missing
sometimes 4 inches in a hour
More heavy rain is expected today in Colorado where rescue workers are battling to reach residents cut off by the worst floods in decades, which have killed at least four people and left 172 still unaccounted for.
Search and rescue teams have used boats and helicopters to pull stranded residents to safety in areas where flash floods toppled buildings, washed out roads and inundated farmland.
The flooding began overnight Wednesday. It was triggered by unusually heavy late-summer storms that soaked Colorado's biggest urban centers, from Fort Collins near the Wyoming border south through Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs.
Boulder and a string of other towns along the Front Range of the Rockies north of Denver were especially hard hit as water poured down rain-soaked mountains and spilled through canyons that funneled the runoff into populated areas.
Overnight, rescue workers took advantage of a break in the weather to reach residents still stranded in their homes by rampaging floodwaters that turned creeks into raging torrents that burst their banks.
"Quite a bit of the water has receded in the city ... and rescue crews will work throughout the night," Ashlee Herring, a spokeswoman for the Boulder Office of Emergency Management said of the recovery effort.
The National Weather Service in Boulder warned of scattered showers and thunderstorms later on Saturday and into Sunday that could trigger further flash flooding in the already drenched area.
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