At least three people are missing in Texas and Kansas after flash flooding that has already killed four others.
Hundreds of families - and thousands of prison inmates - were evacuated because of rising rivers.
In Kansas, the search for a missing 11-year-old boy, Devon Cooley, resumed on Sunday morning two days after he fell into a swollen creek as he was crossing a footbridge.
Wichita Fire Department battalion chief Scott Brown said: "We are more in body recovery mode than rescue.”
In Travis County, Texas, near Austin, officials resumed aerial searches on Sunday for two people whose vehicle was swept off a flooded road.
Just south of Houston, Texas authorities announced the evacuation of about 2,600 inmates from two prisons because of flooding alerts along the Brazos River.
Sandbags have been delivered to the Terrell and Stringfellow Units in Rosharon, where the inmates were transferred on Sunday to other prisons.
Inmates in a low-level security camp at a third facility in coastal Brazoria County are being moved to the main prison building, said officials.
Some 750 families were evacuated in Harris County because of rising water in rivers and creeks around the Houston area.
Francisco Sanchez, a spokesman for the Office of Emergency Management in Harris County, said the area was "not out of the woods yet".
Some people were rescued from the roof of a house by helicopter and aerial footage showed residents wading through waist-deep water or climbing out of windows into rescue boats.
Four people have already died from flooding in rural Washington County, Texas, where more than 16.5in of rain fell in some places Thursday and Friday.
One was 21-year-old National Guardsman Darren Mitchell, who posted a Facebook picture of his flooded car with the caption: "All I wanted to do was go home", moments before he was swept away.
Lela Holland, 64, drowned in her Brenham city mobile home.
Jimmy Wayne Schaeffer, 49, and Pyarali Rajebhi Umatiya, 59, were both killed in their vehicles in separate flooding incidents.
The Memorial Day holiday is forecast to be a washout in the northeast as Tropical Depression Bonnie prowls up the coast.
New York City, Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia will be drenched on Monday, says AccuWeather.
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