Three people have died and thousands have been rescued after “historic” flooding swamped Louisiana.

The National Guard and emergency teams have used helicopters to rescue people stranded in their homes or cars.

Searches are continuing for missing people, as the rain is expected to continue over the weekend.

The heavy rainfall started on August 12 where some areas received more than 17ins of rain.

Neighboring Alabama and Mississippi are also experiencing severe weather.

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Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency on August 12.

On August 13, the governor said: “This is an ongoing event. We’re still in response mode.”

John Bel Edwards and his family were relocated after water flooded their basement.

JR Shelton, the mayor of Central City told The Advocate newspaper: “This is a flood of epic proportions.

“When we talk about floods now, we’ll talk about the great flood of 2016. Everything else pales in comparison.”

Several rivers in Louisiana and Mississippi are overflowing. Gov. John Bel Edwards expects some of the rivers will rise 4ft above previous record levels.

Baton Rouge is one of the worst hit areas where as much as 11.3in of rain was reported. New Orleans has reported 2.34in.

While the worst of the rain appears to have passed, the weather system is expected to move north on August 14, hitting central and northern Louisiana.

Louisiana is prone to bursts of extreme weather; thousands of acres in the state were flooded in 2011 to divert water from the flooded Mississippi River and to spare cities, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans, that lie downstream.

In 2005, New Orleans suffered one of the worst natural disasters in US history, when Hurricane Katrina hit the city. Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people and displaced one million. Thousands of homes were flooded and destroyed in Louisiana and along the Gulf coast.