Here’s what you need to know:

The rain forecast is down, but flood warnings are up.

The center of the storm was about 15 miles southeast of Shreveport, La., on Sunday afternoon, and not going anywhere in a hurry. All of southeast Louisiana remains under a flash flood watch until 7 p.m. Sunday because of how slowly Barry is moving.

New Orleans appears to have been spared the biblical deluge that forecasters thought it might get. The city’s total through Sunday night is now expected to top out at 6 inches or so; at one point there were forecasts that as much as 20 inches might fall. Tropical storm warnings and storm surge warnings for New Orleans have been canceled, and the city appeared to have avoided a painful stress test of the $20 billion flood protection system installed since the devastating flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The heaviest rainfall is now expected in northeastern Louisiana and western Mississippi, the National Weather Service said, where 4 to 8 more inches of rain are forecast. A flash flood warning is also in effect for Mississippi’s capital, Jackson.

Danielle Manning, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the bulk of those potential rains will fall over the next 24 hours. Though some areas could still see very heavy rain, she said, “I would say that the probability of widespread significant flooding is lower than what we initially anticipated.”

About 145,000 households and businesses had no power on Sunday morning, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.US. The outages stretched near the Arkansas border, following Barry’s slow northward creep. Al Marmande, a member of the Terrebonne Parish Council, told a local TV station on Sunday that some residents of his coastal parish southwest of New Orleans could be without power for a number of days.

The storm also required some rescues and sent more than 400 Louisiana residents to the safety of government-run shelters.

“Remember that while we were fortunate with Barry, we may not be so fortunate next time,” Collin Arnold, the homeland security director for New Orleans, said at a news conference in the afternoon. “We are entering the peak of hurricane season, so we need to remain ready.”

Map: Tracking Tropical Storm Barry’s Path

Expected rainfall and path for a storm that threatens Louisiana.

Morgan City may have dodged another bullet.

There was only scattered light rain on Sunday morning in St. Mary Parish, which includes Morgan City, a small town about 20 miles from the southern coast of Louisiana where officials had been braced for a direct hit from the storm.

Officials there continued to express hope that the parish would be spared the worst, as it has been during several other recent Gulf storms.

“I think we’re in better shape than we were yesterday,” said David Naquin, the homeland security director for the parish. “If we just dodge the rain, we’ll be all right. We’ve got some rain coming today. We just don’t know how much we’re going to get.”

There had been no injuries or substantial structural damage in the parish by early Sunday, officials said. Even so, the authorities said they were forced to evacuate a small community outside Franklin, a town of about 9,000, because of what Mr. Naquin called “water issues.”

A dry air mass inland kept Barry from being more than barely a hurricane.

Barry never quite became the classic swirling figure seen with strong hurricanes, Christopher Bannon, a local National Weather Service meteorologist, said on Sunday morning.

The storm system was battered by dry air as it made landfall below Lafayette on the south-central Louisiana coast, Mr. Bannon said, which tamped down its rain bands, keeping them mostly confined to the Gulf of Mexico.

As the storm rotated, dry air over Alabama and Georgia was swept into the system, mixing with the moist tropical air in the Gulf, he said. A pair of competing high-pressure areas to the east and to the north created a phenomenon called wind shear — winds at different levels of the atmosphere moving in very different directions — and that slowed the storm to a crawl.

“When you have dry air and shear, a lot of the rain impacts are displaced from the center” of the storm, Mr. Bannon said. And that makes them hard to predict, he said: “Some of the computer models really struggle with weaker systems and their outer bands.”

Even so, he said, Barry’s outer storm bands could become “reinvigorated and take off” on Sunday if the area warms up. Flash flooding was still a risk, and a strong storm line was also moving toward Baton Rouge from Lafayette. A tornado warning was issued for Denham Springs, on the eastern edge of Baton Rouge, at 8 a.m.

“Still not out of the woods yet,” Mr. Bannon said.

Transportation gets back to business almost as usual.

Transit systems and airports in southeastern Louisiana were largely returning to normal operations by midday Sunday, after suspensions or disruptions at the height of the storm.

Only one or two delays on arriving or departing flights were reported at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans or at Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am,” Kim Fisher, whose flight from Louis Armstrong had been canceled on Saturday, told the NBC affiliate in New Orleans. “I just can’t wait to get back to Michigan. Yes, I can’t wait, can’t wait to get home.”

The Coast Guard reopened the Port of New Orleans on Sunday, and the Regional Transportation Authority said that its buses and most of its ferries would be back to full operation by 1 p.m., though not its streetcars.

“Streetcar service will continue to be replaced by bus service until the streetcar lines are cleared of debris and no cars are blocking tracks,” the agency said in a statement.

Three long-distance Amtrak trains that ordinarily reach New Orleans are operating only on the parts of their routes outside the reach of the storm on Sunday and Monday. Jason Abrams, an Amtrak spokesman, said the railroad would keep track of conditions and evaluate when to restore normal service.

Some churches and businesses in New Orleans were open Sunday morning, and runners and residents on some streets were out walking their dogs.

The storm spawned a tornado near Baton Rouge.

Moderate bands of showers with a few pockets of heavy downpours were moving slowly over Baton Rouge, the state capital, around midday Sunday, according to Mr. Bannon of the Weather Service, and the threat of flooding remained high.

The area was also under a tornado warning. One tornado was confirmed to have touched down in an eastern suburb, Denham Springs, around 8:15 a.m. Another possible tornado was spotted on the eastern edge of Baton Rouge around 10:20 a.m. Damage was reported, including a sighting of a trampoline hurled into the air.

Street flooding was reported in at least one area of the city, but to the relief of city officials, river levels in the area were holding steady.

“Most of the rivers are actually behaving now, because we did not get that 10 to 20 inches we were fearing,” Mr. Bannon said.

The rain-swollen Amite and Comite Rivers were a major contributor to the catastrophic flooding in and around Baton Rouge in August 2016. Thirteen people died in that disaster, and tens of thousands of residents were displaced; almost three years later, some have still not been able to return to their houses.

At Sunday services, congregants were thankful.

At the First Baptist Church in Denham Springs, La., about 290 congregants turned up for the 9:15 a.m. Sunday service. Ashley Green, who runs a women’s group at the church, said it usually draws 800 to 900 people.

“People are still afraid,” she said.

The service was interrupted at least twice by emergency alerts — loud siren-like tones emanating from cellphones throughout the congregation — followed by the gradually louder sound of rain beating down on the pitched roof.

The spacious church was built after the 2016 flood, when the congregation’s old building was inundated with up to 10 feet of water, reaching the sanctuary’s balcony.

Pastor Leo Miller spoke to the congregation about God’s purpose, even in tough times. He said he had grown physically weak on Thursday when he heard how high the nearby rivers were expected to rise.

“I know what 41 feet in the Amire River means,” said Mr. Miller, who wore khaki pants and a salmon-colored short-sleeved button-down as he led the service. His own house was flooded with 16 inches of water in 2016, he said, adding that those whose homes had flooded were given “a greater respect for that which will return.”

This time around, he said, he and his wife elevated their belongings above the 16-inch mark, stashed important papers in his truck, and packed a suitcase in case they needed to evacuate.

As the dire early crest predictions were later scaled back, he said, he wondered if divine intervention had played a hand: “Could it be that God heard the prayer of Denham Springs?”

Afterward, a woman shook his hand with a big smile and thanked him, one of several compliments he received from churchgoers. As she walked happily to her car in the light rain, Mr. Miller joked that the service “wasn’t that good — they’re just excited we didn’t flood.”

Reporting was contributed by Richard Fausset and Beau Evans from New Orleans; Dave Montgomery from Morgan City, La. Emily Lane from Baton Rouge, La.; and Adeel Hassan from New York.

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