With the Mississippi River nearing a crest about 2 feet below flood stage here today, eyes turned to the skies because Vicksburg and all of central Mississippi was told to brace for sleet, snow and icy conditions.

The National Weather Service is saying Vicksburg could receive 1 to 3 inches of snow between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. Overnight lows are expected to be in the upper 20s or low 30s.

“It could start as early as Thursday afternoon, but most likely the snow will begin Thursday evening and become heavy overnight,” said Ariel Cohen, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson. “It should move out of the region by Friday afternoon.”

The river was at 41 feet this morning, a rise of two tenths in a 24-hour period. Flood stage at Vicksburg is 43 feet.

The gates of the Steele Bayou Control Structure 30 miles north of Vicksburg will remain open, however, and other high water effects are expected to be minimal in the city and county.

The Kings Point Ferry, which crosses the Yazoo Diversion Canal just upstream from the Port of Vicksburg and serves mostly private farming and hunting interests, was expected to close until the river subsides. Warren County Road Manager Richard Winans said the ferry had been scheduled to close last week when the river topped 40 feet, but county officials opted to maintain service up to a 41-foot stage. 

The ferry, which is used daily by just a handful of customers this time of year, will reopen when the river dips back below 40 feet, said Winans.

“We just have to watch the forecast every day now, that’s all we can do,” he said.

The river is forecast to rise slowly today and Thursday and crest at 41.2 feet Friday before beginning a slow decline.

“We’re going to see a very slow fall for a week to a week and a half,” said Daniel Pearce, hydrologist with the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center in Slidell, La. “Then we’re going to see another small rise coming from upstream, but again it is not forecast to top flood stage.” 

Another rise can be expected in a matter of weeks as snowmelt begins across the river basin, but it’s too soon to predict whether significant flooding will occur.

As for today, Winans said a handful of flood-prone, gravel roads in the county have been closed due to high water, including Chickasaw, Long Lake and Thompson Lake roads.

The Steele Bayou Control Structure sits at the mouth of the only drainage point for roughly 4,000 square miles of levee-locked, flood-prone timber and farmland in the Mississippi Delta known as the Yazoo Backwater Area.

As of this morning, the land side of the structure measured 89.5 feet and the river side measured 89.2 feet, both rising of 0.2 foot in a 24-hour period.

As long as the water stage on the land side of the structure remains higher than on the river side, the structure’s gates can be left open and the backwater area can drain into the Yazoo River, a tributary of the Mississippi. However, when the land side is lower than the river side, the gates must be kept closed to keep out floodwater. With the gates closed, levees meant to protect the backwater area serve instead like the walls of a giant bathtub, holding in any rain that falls over the region.

“We don’t expect to have to close it at anytime” during this high water event, said Waylon Hill, senior technician in the water control division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Big Black River near Bovina continues to experience moderate flooding, and is expected to remain about 2 feet above flood stage of 28 feet through the weekend. Low-lying cropland begins to go under-water at 28 feet, while Warriors Trail is typically safe to 32 feet. The river was running at 30.1 feet this morning, and is forecast to crest at 30.5 feet on Sunday.

Contact Steve Sanoski at ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com