Tresa Baldas

Detroit Free Press

Following a messy morning of flooding, highway closures, crashes and cars submerged in water, the National Weather Service has extended a flash flood warning until 2:15 p.m. for metro Detroit, which is seeing water levels inch up by the hour.

The latest radar estimates and spotter reports show that upwards of 3 to 4 inches have fallen in portions of Wayne County, including downtown Detroit, and another 1 to 2 inches are possible across the tri-county area. Previous estimates had shown that as of 8 a.m., 2.3 inches of rain had fallen in parts of Wayne County. Royal Oak had 1.9 inches as of 9 a.m.; Farmington had 1.2 inches as of 7:30 a.m.

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Meanwhile, the rain continues to drench the region — and it's not going to get much nicer anytime soon, experts warn.

According to the National Weather Service, metro Detroit can brace for on-again, off-again rain showers throughout the day. And starting at about midnight, rain is expected to fall for 12 straight hours across the region. The next few days don't look good, either. Forecasters say metro Detroit is in for a wet, cloudy and cool weekend.

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"We won't start drying out until Sunday. The next few days look fairly wet, windy and cool," said Heather Orow, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, noting the current situation doesn't appear to be as devastating as the historic 2014 floods that caused widespread property damage in the billions and stranded scores of motorists.

In 2014, Orow noted, the region got walloped with a gush of rain in a relatively short period of time: Between 4-6½ inches fell over a four-hour period. This time around, in that same time frame, the region has seen 2.3 inches of rain at most at Metro Airport.

"That's quite a bit less," Orow said. "It does not look like (2014) at this point. It's something that we're going to continue to monitor. We are seeing floods, but not of that magnitude."

Orow also explained: "The shorter the period of time the rain falls in, the greater the chance you're going to have for flooding."

Meanwhile, metro Detroit is struggling to deal with the flooding it has already seen along roadways and freeways in Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties.

More than 2 inches of rain have fallen on the tri-county area, which is expected to get hit with another three-quarters of an inch of rain overnight.

"This nonstop rain has flooding everywhere. All freeways are affected," said Michigan Department of Transportation spokesperson Diane Cross. "'When the ground is saturated from all the rain, the water has to go somewhere and the lowest point is often the freeways. The water has nowhere to go and we get flooding."

Stretches of 8 Mile road bordering Detroit and Oakland and Macomb counties were flooded deeply through the morning. An 8 Mile underpass below train tracks between John R and Woodward became impassable.

In Ferndale, one of the communities hit hard by flooding in August 2014, some homes were seeing water leaking into basements, but as of 10:45 a.m. not on the scale of the floods two years ago.

Downtown Detroit traffic was snarled as drivers maneuvered around flooded streets and the shutdown of the northbound Lodge Freeway. Surface streets were jammed throughout the morning.

The northbound Southfield freeway is closed at Michigan Avenue because of flooding, according to an 11 a.m. advisory by Dearborn police.

The highways were a bigger mess. According to MDOT, here's what the morning commute looked like:

I-75 Southbound at I-94 was backed up due to flooding.

An accident at I-75 south at Fort St./Schaefer led to a lane closure.

The Lodge Freewayunder Cobo is closed due to flooding.

Jefferson Avenue west to M-10 North also is closed due to flooding.

The area near I-96 eastbound at Grand River and Livernois is flooded. Motorists are advised to use extreme caution in this area.

Eastbound I-94 just past Cadieux was shut down due to a crash about an hour ago, but has since cleared up.

Another crash on I-75 South at Eureka also caused a slowdown, but the crash scene has since been cleared.

Drivers across southeast Michigan are advised to be extra cautious on the roads this morning because of reduced visibility and slick roadways. The heavy rain is expected to let up after 2:15, though the region can expect to see showers off and on all day.

Several thousand area residents are without electricity this morning. The DTE power outage map shows scattered outages, with the most serious in Ypsilanti, where 918 customers are without electricity. There are two separate outages in Livonia, one on the east side and the other on the west side, affecting about 936 customers. There are outages in a number of other communities, including Detroit, Grosse Pointe Park, Roseville and Ann Arbor.

Please report back to Freep.com for more on this developing weather alert.