Vicksburg residents can start looking for the Mississippi River to begin falling, eventually dropping to about 41 feet in the next three to four days.

“It’s cresting right now, and we should begin to see it falling,” said Marty Pope, senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service Office in Jackson. “There will still be some areas under water for the next couple of weeks; it takes a while for some of those areas to drain.”

The river’s stage at the Vicksburg gage was 43.22 feet Friday and 43.28 Saturday. It was at 43.20 feet Sunday and 43.07 feet Monday morning. By Monday afternoon, the river was at 43 and falling.

Pope said no significant rain is predicted for the upper Mississippi Valley, adding, most of the predicted rainfall for the Mississippi Valley is in the Vicksburg area and south, which will not affect the river stage here.

Locally, Warren County Emergency Management Director John Elfer said Chickasaw Road and Zeigler Road is closed, and some agricultural land was underwater, “Which means the farmers can’t get to it.”

Other areas are also affected. Long Lake Road is under water, and Jackson Lane in north Vicksburg west of Ford Subdivision is partially underwater.

Greg Raimondo, spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District, said Corps officials were following the river stages and weather forecast.

He said work on levee improvements along Mississippi 465 have been suspended, adding the delay is common during high water periods, because the contractor cannot work on both sides of the levee simultaneously.

Pope said the long range forecasts still call for a risk of flooding in April and May as the weather systems change from El Nino to La Nina, adding more will be known in the risk of flooding by weather patterns in mid-May.