Barry crawls ashore in Louisiana.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Barry rolled into the Louisiana coast Saturday, flooding highways, forcing people to scramble to rooftops and dumping heavy rain that could test the levees and pumps that were bolstered after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.

After briefly becoming a Category 1 hurricane, the system quickly weakened to a tropical storm as it made landfall near Intracoastal City, Louisiana, about 160 miles (257km) west of New Orleans, with its winds falling to 70 mph (112km), the National Hurricane Center said.

By late afternoon, New Orleans had been spared the storm’s worst effects, receiving only sporadic light showers and gusty winds. But officials warned that Barry could still cause disastrous flooding across a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast and drop up to 20 inches (50 cm) of rain through Sunday across a part of Louisiana that includes New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

“This is just the beginning,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “It’s going to be a long several days for our state.”

The Coast Guard rescued more than a dozen people from the remote Isle de Jean Charles, south of New Orleans, where water rose so high that some residents clung to rooftops.

None of the main levees on the Mississippi River failed or were breached, Edwards said. But video showed water overtopping a levee in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans, where fingers of land extend deep into the Gulf of Mexico.

Officials in the rural Louisiana coastal parish of Terrebonne ordered an evacuation of some areas due to water overtopping another levee. It was unclear how many people would be affected.