NEW ORLEANS — Outer bands of rain from Hurricane Rita began lashing New Orleans today, the first rainfall since Katrina, raising fears that the patched-up levee system could fail and swamp the below-sea-level city all over again.

A direct hit from Hurricane Rita was unlikely, but the Category 5 storm veered on a more northerly course toward a Saturday landfall in Texas and a tropical storm warning extended as far east as New Orleans. Already, forecasts for southeast Louisiana called for between 3 and 5 inches of rain.

Engineers have warned that the fractured levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.

"We're already getting a few spotty showers in the New Orleans area," meteorologist Robert Ricks said. "There are going to be brief periods of brief heavy downpours as these squall bands move through."

The new forecast added urgency to continuing efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers to shore up levees with sandbags and add portable pumps through the city in anticipation of more flooding.

"Right now, it's a wait and see and hope for the best," said Corps spokesman Mitch Frazier.

If the levees fail again, the areas of New Orleans that are most likely to flood are the same neighborhoods inundated by Katrina, many of which have been dry for less than a week.

"If it's a quick, fast rain, we'll see localized flooding," Frazier said. "There is no doubt about that."

The process of getting the water from Katrina out is 90 percent complete and the Corps is confident it will be able to quickly pump water out again, he said.

Searchers looking for bodies continued smashing into homes that had been locked or submerged under Katrina's highest floodwaters, pushing the overall body count past 1,000. The death toll in Louisiana alone stood at 799 on Wednesday, an increase of 153 since the weekend and nearly 80 percent of the 1,036 deaths attributed to Katrina across the Gulf Coast region.

Associated Press Writers Michelle Roberts, Allen Breed and Mary Foster in New Orleans contributed to this report.