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In cities, these forces are controlled. Not here. In my village an oil tank is picked up and dropped down on the corner of Main Street. The water blows out not just basement windows but the plate glass of the supermarket and the building across the street. A CVS collapses. In the village down the road a motel is picked up and swept away with one person left inside. For weeks later you will see smashed siding along the riverbanks as you drive along the highway. The pale blue is the same cerulean color of hope. You inevitably hold your breath. That woman, the one who had been left in it, died.

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The warning came five hours ahead of a looming deadline for nearly 11,000 residents to evacuate their homes for a second time in a month.

Water from the Souris River, which loops down from Canada through north central North Dakota, has been bloated by heavy spring snowmelt and rain on both sides of the border.

The resulting deluge is expected to dwarf a historic flood of 1969, when the Souris reached 1,554.5 feet above sea level. The river is expected to hit nearly 1,563 feet this weekend -- eventually topping the historical record of 1,558 feet set in 1881.

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It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas -- fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they've ever been -- the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they're somehow connected.

If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year's record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest -- resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi -- could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

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The White House says Obama will also meet with first responders and state and local officials. The Mississippi crested in Memphis earlier this week at a near-record level, flooding low-lying neighborhoods and forcing hundreds of residents into emergency shelters.

Obama has declared Memphis, Shelby County and surrounding counties disaster areas, making them eligible for federal aid.

The president is traveling to Memphis to deliver a commencement address at a high school that won a White House education competition.

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To give some sense of the devastation, we have compiled the clips of video footage -- both from amateurs and news networks -- which convey the extremity of these storms and the aftermath in the South.

The college town of Tuscaloosa, the home of the University of Alabama, was flattened by a vast tornado, captured on this AP video:

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Next to it, people waved and jumped, desperate for help after being stranded for six days by mudslides that obliterated entire communities in the jagged mountains outside Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 677 people as of Tuesday and leaving nearly 14,000 homeless.

"Do we have enough space to land?" the pilot, Col. Orlando Artur da Costa, head of the air rescue sent by Parana state police, asked his crew mates.

Minutes earlier, an attempt to touch down in another isolated area with nearly 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of food, water and medical supplies had been aborted after what at first seemed to be flat dirt turned out to be nearly liquid mud that could have swamped the six-person helicopter.

Three men digging at the edge of the mud flat, their legs protected by trash bags tied around their thighs, were left behind for another mission.

This time Costa got the go-ahead: The space was tight, with sheer drops on three sides, but it was enough. He touched down on the grass and more a dozen women and children crowded around, barely waiting for the rotors to stop.

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Walls of earth and water swept away homes in the mountains north of Rio de Janeiro, wiping out families and leaving survivors scrambling Thursday to reach still-trapped neighbors.

At least 355 people died in three Rio state towns after slides hit at about 3 a.m. Wednesday, and 50 were still missing, officials said. Another 34 people had already died in floods and slides since Christmas in southeastern Brazil.

"We were like zombies, covered in mud, in the dark, digging and digging" after the slides hit at about 3 a.m. Wednesday, said Geisa Carvalho, 19.

A tremendous rumble awoke Geisa and her mother Vania Ramos as tons of earth slid down a sheer granite rock face onto their neighborhood. The power was out, but by lightning flashes they could see a torrent of mud and water rushing just a few feet (meters) from their home -- and the remnants of their neighbors' houses that were swept far down a hill.

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Drenching rain that started before Christmas has flooded an area the size of France and Germany combined in northeastern Queensland state. Rivers are overflowing and at least 22 towns and cities in the farming region are inundated.

In the coastal city of Rockhampton, waters from the still-swelling Fitzroy River closed the airport and cut the main highway to the state capital of Brisbane. Scores of families abandoned their homes for relief centers on high ground.

By Monday night, floodwaters had inundated the last route into the city, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said.

"Rockhampton is now completely stranded -- a town of 75,000 people -- no airport, rail or road," Bligh told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Residents emptied supermarket shelves of food and bottled water in recent days as they stocked up to reduce the need to get around in waist-deep waters.

Acting Defense Minister Warren Snowdon said a C-130 military cargo plane would fly to a town north of Rockhampton on Monday carrying food, medical supplies and other items that would then be trucked to the stricken city.

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Massachusetts was in line for a soaking as the storm began making its way across New England on Friday. The torrential downpours and high winds struck the Berkshires early in the morning and were expected to hit the Boston area by midday.

The weather also snarled air, road and train traffic in the New York City area Friday morning. Motorists and pedestrians there coped with sheets of rain, poor visibility, slick roads and strong wind gusts as they made their way to work. The Federal Aviation Administration reported flight delays at New York's Kennedy and La Guardia airports.

The massive rainstorm drove up the Eastern Seaboard from the Carolinas to Maine on Thursday, the worst of it falling in North Carolina where Jacksonville took on 12 inches in six hours -- nearly a quarter of its typical annual rainfall.

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After more than 30 years of carving out the semblance of a working-class life, this junk spread out to dry on the wreckage of his house was now all Gul had.

"This is everything," he said, waving his hands at the muck and the garbage.

Nearly a month after floods first began battering Pakistan, and as waters still sweep through the south, the first victims are coming home. Millions of people may soon find that, like Gul, their old lives have disappeared -- and that the receding water is only the start.

"There are so many houses to be rebuilt. It's not only here, it's everywhere," said Gul, a gentle man with a gray beard turning yellow with age, who thinks he's about 70 years old. He supported his sprawling family as a middleman, arranging deals between farmers and wholesalers in the local fruit market. It was a good life, and the former wood cutter had built a mud-walled house with three bedrooms, a guest room, a bathroom and a courtyard. They had ceiling fans and a sewing machine.

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Brown will broadcast his political talk show on Wednesday and Thursday evening. It airs on KOA-AM.

Brown headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Katrina hit. He became a target of the outrage over the government's response when former President George W. Bush told him with the media present: "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

Brown says in a new HBO documentary on Katrina by director Spike Lee that he winced when Bush said that because he had just finished telling the president why things weren't working.

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Flooding there has already stranded 20 million people, more than 10 percent of the population. A fifth of the nation is underwater. More than 3.5 million children are in imminent danger of contracting cholera and acute diarrhea; millions more are in danger of starving if they don’t get help soon. More than 1,500 have already been killed by the floods.

This is a human disaster.

It’s also a frightening opening for the Taliban.

Yet so far only a trickle of aid has gotten through. As of today (Thursday), the U.S. has pledged $150 million, along with 12 helicopters to take food and material to the victims. (Other rich nations have offered even less -- the U.K., $48.5 million; Japan, $10 million; and France, a measly $1 million. Today, Hillary Clinton is speaking at the U.N., seeking more.)

This is bizarre and shameful. We’re spending over $100 billion this year on military maneuvers to defeat the Taliban in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. Over 200 helicopters are deployed in that effort. And we’re spending $2 billion in military aid to Pakistan.

More must be done for flood victims, immediately.

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Since the end of the war in 1995, authorities have done their best to clear away the estimated 1 million land mines planted by the conflicting sides -- or at least to mark contaminated areas.

But what if the ground moves?

"Each time the water pulls back, the geography is changed a bit and if there were any mines there, they end up somewhere else," said Antun Sinkovic, a quality control officer of Bosnia's Mine Action Center on Thursday.

At the end of the 1992-95 war, the U.N. was forced to estimate the number of mines strewn throughout the country because the conflicting parties -- Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims -- rarely kept records.

Under an international treaty, Bosnia was supposed to be mine-free by March 2009. Instead, Europe's most mine-infested nation was given another decade to clear the estimated 220,000 remaining mines and other unexploded ordnance. Authorities in the Balkan country acknowledge that more than 1,550 square kilometers (963 square miles) of territory is still riddled with mines.

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The misery in the area of 10 provinces, regions and municipalities was expected to continue, with forecasters saying heavy rains were expected for the next three days.

The Fuhe River breached its banks Wednesday morning, but residents had been moved to safety the night before, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It came two days after a dike on another portion of the river burst, forcing the evacuations of about 100,000 people.

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Firefighters and volunteers worked overnight and Wednesday to evacuate dozens of towns and villages. Officials in Banja Luka say rain caused 30 landslides there; Tuzla and Brcko are reportedly threatened, as well.

Sections of most roads in the north and the west of the country are flooded, and people have had to spend the night in their cars or in public buses.

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Flash flood warnings are posted in central Indiana following two days of heavy thunderstorms. Water from a retention lake has overflowed an earthen dam west of Indianapolis. Firefighters have rescued at least three people trapped by rising water.

In southern Wisconsin, an apparent tornado damaged or destroyed dozens of homes in Eagle, where the fire chief is warning people to stay away because of live wires on the ground. Officials say all residents are accounted for after a warning siren failed before the storm hit.

In central Illinois, heavy rains created flash floods while witnesses reported tornadoes near the Indiana border.

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At least 46 people died Tuesday in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, according to the state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper. Rescue workers are pulling residents out of the worst-affected areas and trying to open a key road damaged in the torrents. Bridges in the region have also been washed out.

State television reported Wednesday that 28 of the people were killed when houses built on mountains collapsed in landslides in Buthidaung, 360 miles (575 kilometers) northwest of Yangon, and 18 others died in Maundaw, south of Buthidaung.

Meanwhile, across the border, Bangladesh recovered three more bodies overnight in the southeastern Cox's Bazar district, raising the death toll from powerful landslides to 56, said local magistrate Mohammad Jasim Uddin. Rains in the area have now stopped, he said.

Flooding is common in both countries during the monsoon season that typically starts in late May. Cyclone Nargis struck both countries in May 2008, devastating large swaths of Myanmar where it left more than 140,000 people dead or missing.

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