'So much land under so much water': extreme flooding is drowning parts of the midwest

As relentless rain wreaks havoc in the farm belt, many struggle to cope

Even with half of the houses on her street underwater, Dina Barker looked at the numbers and calculated that it was worth holding out.

The rate at which water was pouring out of the rain-swollen Keystone dam less than 10 miles up the Arkansas River had been enough to submerge most of Barker's neighbourhood in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, last week. But her house sits on a small rise just feet from the pop-up lake that rose in hours as the surging river broke the town's flood walls.