Atlanta-area residents are trying to recover from floodwaters that swallowed entire neighborhoods, destroying highways and homes and leaving at least eight people dead.

In many areas, the scene is reminiscent of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, with cars, homes and even a roller coaster engulfed in the muddy deluge. Even as the floodwaters began to recede Wednesday morning, homeowners, many of whom were already fighting off the effects of the recession, worried whether they would be able to recover from this new personal and economic disaster.

Meteorologists told CNN that while the devastation from recent floods looks like the result of a storm that formed over tropical waters, the floods are actually the result of rain that has soaked area for more than a week. The steady rains have caused storms to stay in place. So that, in part, is what has caused the severe flooding -- not torrential rains or high winds, often associated with stronger tropical storms, which form over oceans instead of land, CNN reports.

This is something that's really impacting a lot of people and scientifically, it's an event that we don't see too often here in Atlanta -- especially when it's not connected to a tropical system," said Laura Griffith, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Georgia. "When you're getting hit day after day with a couple inches of rainfall, that's where you start to see problems."