A deluged Wis. braces for more rain

Another round of thunderstorms brought more rain and flash-flood warnings to an already deluged southwestern Wisconsin on Monday, forcing residents below four dams to evacuate.

Strong wind knocked out power to parts of Vilas and Oneida counties, and the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for Vernon County.

President Bush had declared Vernon and four other counties federal disaster areas after last week's flooding forced people out of their homes.

With more storms expected overnight Monday, about 80 people living below the earthen Runge Hallow, Hidden Valley, Yettri-Primmer and Seas Branch dams were told to evacuate beginning at 4 p.m., said Linda Nederlo, a spokeswoman for Vernon County Emergency Management.

A week ago, the same dams filled when torrential rains of up to 12 inches caused flooding. All the dams held, but overflow at the Hidden Valley dam caused some erosion.

As the storms rolled east on Monday, a 75-year-old man was struck and killed by lightning as he sought shelter from the rain under a pine on a golf course in Madison, police spokesman Mike Hanson said.

The Dane County Coroner's office said the man's name was being held until family members were notified.

Elsewhere, cleanup and recovery were under way in Ohio and the rest of the Great Lakes region hit hard by last week's storms.

The electricity was back on for most of the more than 1 million customers who lost power. In Illinois, 7,700 ComEd customers were still without power Monday morning, down from more than 630,000, and in southern Michigan utility crews had restored power to all but about 4,800 of 427,000 homes and businesses that lost service two days earlier. About 10,000 were still without power in Wisconsin.

The weather service confirmed that tornadoes touched down in six areas of Michigan along an 80-mile line Friday, destroying at least 250 homes and businesses in the town of Fenton. The tornado's path there widened to about one-quarter mile, the weather service said.

Another tornado struck the small town of Northwood, N.D., about 30 miles southwest of Grand Forks, on Sunday, destroying two small mobile home parks and damaging much of the rest of the town. One man was killed.

Amtrak announced that its passenger rail service between Minnesota's Twin Cities and La Crosse, Wis., was back to normal after flood-damaged track was repaired near Winona, Minn.

In Wisconsin, Federal Emergency Management Agency teams were assessing the damage caused by last week's storms.

Jeremy Knopow, 30, of Burlington, was waiting to see what federal aid would be available to cover his belongings or the estimated $10,000 in structural damage to his home.

"If homeowner's doesn't cover it, and that doesn't cover it, we're just screwed," Knopow said.

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Associated Press writer Robert Imrie in Wausau, Ryan J. Foley in Madison and Emily Zeugner in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.