Horse owners near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, scrambled to react to substantial rainfall and heavy flooding that surprised them late last week. Now, even as the waters begin to subside, owners are challenged to locate animals displaced by the storm and rebuild their flood-ravaged properties.

On Thursday, Aug. 11, most horse owners in parishes near Baton Rouge had no idea what was ahead.

“We kept watching the (computer) models and everything looked like a typical summer storm,” said Rebecca McConnico, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, professor of equine medicine at Louisiana State University (LSU) and leader of the Louisiana State Animal Response Team. “But the models kept getting more and more purple.”

The cause was a slow moving low-pressure system hanging over the Gulf of Mexico that ultimately brought rains to Baton Rouge and nearby parishes, swelled the Amite and Comite rivers, and, by the weekend, flooded properties across the region