By Lisa Maria Garza
DALLAS (Reuters) - Storms bringing as much as seven inches of rain drenched North Texas overnight into Friday, prompting hundreds of calls for emergency assistance and adding to the woes of the state where 18 people have been killed in severe weather this week.
The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the Dallas area on Friday morning and a flash flood watch for an area stretching from central Texas into central Kansas.
The seven inches (17.8 cm) in North Texas from Thursday morning into Friday comes after storms dumped seven inches on Austin on Monday and as much as 11 inches (28 cm) overnight on Monday in the Houston area.
Hundreds of people spent the night in evacuation shelters across Texas as this week's floods turned streets in rivers, ripped homes off their foundations and swept over thousands of vehicles.
In Houston alone, more than 4,000 structures were damaged by floods since Monday that hit the fourth-biggest U.S. city.
In central Texas overnight, Travis County firefighters rescued 21 people from a drifting houseboat while Johnson County emergency workers rescued 14 drivers and residents. No injuries were reported, officials said.
Before Thursday night's storm, Texas climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said so far in May the state had received 7.54 inches (19 cm) of rainfall on average. That breaks the record of 6.66 inches (17 cm) set in June 2004, based on records dating back to 1895, according to Nielsen-Gammon of the Office of the Texas State Climatologist at Texas A&M University.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Susan Heavey)
