Officials were going door-to-door, warning about 240 people to get out before the river reaches its expected peak on Tuesday (local time). In all, residents in more than 1300 homes have been told to leave, and some 370 people were staying in shelters.
The mighty Mississippi spared Kentucky and northwest Tennessee any catastrophic flooding, but some low-lying towns and farmland along the banks of the big river have been inundated with water. And there's tension farther south in the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana as the crest of the river continues its lazy pace, leaving behind what could be a slow-moving disaster.
Jittery Memphis residents have been abandoning low-lying homes for days as the dangerously surging river threatened to crest at 14.63m, just shy of a 14.84m record of a devastating 1937 flood.
Record river levels, some dating as far back as the 1920s, have already been broken in some areas. Heavy rains and snowmelt have been blamed for the flooding.
Rain didn't help ease the anxiety in Memphis yesterday, and it was just enough to send some packing and calling the city bus for transportation out. The precipitation wasn't expected to add to the flood levels, though, forecasters said.
"Reality has set in, so now we're getting more calls," said Alvin Pearson, assistant manager of operations for the Memphis bus service.
Downriver in Louisiana, officials warned residents that even if a key spillway northwest of Baton Rouge were to be opened, residents could expect water 1.5-7.5-m deep over parts of seven parishes. Some of Louisiana's most valuable farmland is expected to be inundated.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said the vital Morganza spillway, northwest of Baton Rouge, could be opened as early as Thursday although a decision has not yet been made. If it is opened, it could stay open for weeks.
A separate spillway northwest of New Orleans was to be opened today, helping ease the pressure on levees there, and inmates were set to be evacuated the same day from the low-lying state prison in Angola.
Meanwhile, there was relief in communities upstream when water levels began to recede although in Arkansas authorities recovered the body of a man who drove around barricades earlier in the week and was swept away by floodwaters when he tried to walk out.
In Memphis, at the site of Beale Street, the thoroughfare synonymous with Mississippi blues, water pooled at the end of it and tourists took pictures. The water was about 800m from the street's world-famous nightspots.
