The Mississippi River is on its third significant rise of the year and is forecast to jump 1 to 2 feet per day until May 15, when it tops out at its Vicksburg flood stage of 43 feet on the local gauge.

“What’s driving all of this are the heavy rains that they had recently in the Tennessee area,” said Dave Ramirez, senior hydrologist at the Lower Mississippi Forecast Center in Slidell, La.

The Cumberland River lapped out of its banks at Nashville Monday after severe storms dumped more than 13 inches of rain on the city during the weekend. The Cumberland and Tennessee rivers both feed into the Ohio River, which converges with the Mississippi River at Cairo, Ill., which is forecast to crest this evening at 9 feet above flood stage.

“Once Cairo crests and the river begins to fall there, any rain north of Cairo shouldn’t raise the crest for areas south of there, such as Vicksburg,” Ramirez said.

The river this morning was 33 feet at Vicksburg, a rise of 1.5 feet in 24 hours. Unless the crest forecast is bumped up, the rise is expected to have limited effects in the city and county when it tops out at 43 feet.

A limited number of low-lying, mostly gravel roads in the northern and southern portions of the city and county go under water at or just before flood stage. Warren County Road Manager Richard Winans said the Kings Point Ferry will stop shuttling vehicles when the river reaches 40 feet, which should come in the middle of next week.

Some farmers who have planted soybeans or corn on the lowest-lying land in the county might lose some of their crops, but Warren County Extension Service Director John Coccaro said he does not anticipate widespread crop losses.

“I’m hoping this will be extremely temporary, and that water will fall back out as quickly as it comes up,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because over the past three years we’ve just been constantly plagued by high water or threatened by it.”

Mississippi 465, which leads to the Eagle Lake community from U.S. 61 North, and LeTourneau Road in southern Vicksburg will not go under water unless the river nears 46 feet.

In the Yazoo Backwater Area, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers likely will have to close the four, 30-foot-wide gates of Steel Bayou today or Friday, said Waylon Hill, civil engineering technician in the Corps’ water control division. Steele Bayou is the main drainage point for 4,093 square miles of levee-locked forest and farmland in the southernmost portion of the Mississippi Delta, north of Vicksburg. Its gates must be closed to prevent backwater flooding when the river stage gets as high as the water stage inside the backwater area.

The river stage at Steele Bayou measured 80.4 feet this morning, while the water stage on the land side of the flood control structure measured slightly higher at 80.6 feet. The National Weather Service this morning was forecasting only a 20 percent chance of rain in Issaquena County in the south Delta just north of Vicksburg.

With the gates of Steele Bayou closed, any rainfall over the area is trapped with nowhere to go. Without rainfall, Hill said the backwater area water stage is forecast to rise to about 84 feet. With normal rainfall, it will go to about 88 feet. Normal water stage for the area is 69 feet, and crops begin to go underwater around 86 feet.

While the river is forecast to make sharp jumps toward flood stage over the next week, Hill said it probably won’t recede as quickly once it crests. After Cairo crests, he said flood control reservoirs on the Ohio and other rivers will begin to be slowly emptied.

“It’s not going to be a very quick fall,” he said.

In mid-February, the river rose to an early season crest of 41 feet — which forecasters warned could signal an even greater spring rise. On April 9, the river rose to a crest of 40.9 feet.

If the river tops flood stage this year, it will be the third consecutive year of spring flooding in Vicksburg — the first time that’s happened since 1996-1998. Last year the river topped out at 47.5 feet on May 27, and in 2008 the river peaked at 50.9 feet on April 19, which was the highest stage since 1973.