[12/6/01]It takes a lot of rain to move the lower Mississippi. The lower basin got a lot of rain. And the Mississippi is moving.

Information from the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center in Slidell, La., says the Mississippi River bottomed out Nov. 26 on the Vicksburg gauge at 3.2 feet. That was 10 days ago.

The river then began a rise that brought it to 27.5 this morning.

Forecasts from the center indicate the river should reach a crest 31 to 32 feet here Monday or Tuesday. It’s nowhere near flood stage, but a nearly 30-foot rise in two weeks is a lot of water.

E.J. Leche, a forecaster at the Slidell center, said the rise was caused by the confluence of rains that blanketed the river valley last week and extended into the Ohio River and its tributaries.

“It’s normal to have rain in early winter, but not necessarily that heavy,” he said, adding that stations across the area recorded multiday totals of 11 to 13 inches.

According to the National Weather Service, Vicksburg received 11.26 inches of rain in the week ending Sunday.

Leche said the heavy rain also pushed levels up on the Yazoo River in Mississippi. Wednesday the Yazoo reached a level of 27.7 feet at Yazoo City, only 1.3 feet below the flood stage of 29 feet.

“It’s on a very slow fall now,” he said.

Those rains have caused some localized flooding on the upper parts of the Little Sunflower River which joins the Yazoo a few miles upstream of Redwood, said Wayland Hill of the Vicksburg District Corps of Engineers.

“But there’s been nothing on the lower end” of the Little Sunflower, he said.

Hill also said outdoorsmen who hunt in the Lower Delta near Steele Bayou and other small streams may see some flooding in the woods, but he did not expect the water behind the Steele Bayou and Little Sunflower River Control Structures to rise high enough to get into any camp buildings or houses.

“It will go to about 80 feet (mean sea level) at Steele Bayou and 85 feet at the Little Sunflower,” Hill said.

The rise on the Mississippi River benefited at least one situation in Warren County: the Kings Point Ferry.

Late Nov. 29 or early Nov. 30, vandals unfastened the cable clamps holding the cable that guides the ferry across the Yazoo River. This allowed the barge and its push boat to float against the bank on the island side of the river.

Because of strong current from last week’s heavy rain, workers from the Warren County Road Department were unable to string new cable until Tuesday afternoon.

When the job was complete about 4 p.m. Tuesday, several hunters who had been stranded at hunting camps were able to cross the Yazoo.