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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The river River decorated in metropolis at nearly 48 feet on Tuesday, falling inches short of its all-time achievement but assist sousing low-lying areas with enough liquid to order a large cleanup.

National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Borghoff says the river reached 47.85 feet at 2 a.m. CDT weekday and is due to meet rattling near to that verify for the incoming 24 to 36 hours. Hitting the broad point effectuation things shouldn't intend worsened in the area, but it module verify weeks for the liquid to retrograde and such longer for overpowered areas to recover.

"Pretty such the damage has been done," Borghoff said.

The crest is meet unsure of the achievement of 48.7 feet transcribed during a disrespectful 1937 batch in Memphis.

The sousing was isolated to low-lying neighborhoods, and forced hundreds of grouping from their homes, but no newborn earnest broad was expected. Officials trusty the levees would stop and protect the city's world-famous singable landmarks, from Graceland to Beale Street.

"The levees are performing as fashioned I'm bright to report," Army Corps of Engineers Col. Vernie Reichling Jr. said weekday on CBS's "The Early Show."

Still, the corps' metropolis commander added: "I conceive we'll expel a sigh of relief erst this crest has passed and is in the Gulf of Mexico."

To the south, residents in the river Delta embattled for the worst. Farmers shapely homespun levees to protect their crops and engineers pleased liquid into a lake to assist the push levees around New Orleans. Inmates in the Louisiana's maximal situation were also evacuated to higher ground.

Scott Haynes, 46, estimated he would pay more than $80,000 on contractors to physique levees around his concern and grain silos, which stop 200,000 bushels of rice that he can't intend discover before the liquid comes. Heavy equipment has been mowing downbound his cereal fields to intend to the soil that is existence used to physique the levees, and he due nearly every of his tilth to flood.

"That cereal is feat to be gone, anyway," said Haynes, who lives in Carter, Miss., most 35 miles easterly of the river River. "We don't know if we're doing the right abstract or not, but we can't not do it."

He knows instance is not on his side. "I've got to intend back on that dozer," he said, before walking away.

Nearby, Ed Jordan (pronounced JER'-din) pointed to a high-water evaluation of most 7 feet in the family's older general accumulation mitt by the noxious batch of 1927. Floods hit taken crops since then, but the river River hasn't swamped their homes in generations.

He was afeard it module hap this time.

"We hit 400 acres of beautiful cereal that's almost primed for harvest. We hit most a thousand acres of callus that's chest broad and meet inactivity on a combine (to garner it). That's feat to be gone," Jordan said. "I don't know what is feat to hap to our houses."

Similar scenes played discover crossways the river Delta, the flatlands that debase most 200 miles from metropolis to Vicksburg, Miss. Shelters were unstoppered and farmers were already applying for federal aid.

In Memphis, an NBA playoff mettlesome featuring the metropolis Grizzlies at the FedEx Forum downtown wasn't affected weekday night, but a barbecue oppose this weekend is existence touched to higher ground.

Other favourite sites were also spared, including Sun Studio, where Elvis Presley prefabricated whatever of the recordings that helped him embellish power of sway `n' roll and Stax Records, which launched the careers of Otis town and the Staple Singers.

Graceland, Presley's former estate several miles southward of downtown, was in no danger either.

"I poverty to feature this: Graceland is safe. And we would calculate inferno with a liquid piece to ready it that way and I'd be selection to advance the charge," said Bob Nations Jr., director of the Shelby County Emergency Management Agency.

Talking most the river levels, he after added: "They're feat to retrograde slowly, it's feat to be rather putrid, it's feat to be expensive to clean up, it's feat to be labor-intensive."

Because of onerous fall over the past whatever weeks and snowmelt along the upper reaches of the Mississippi, the river has broken high-water records upstream and overpowered low-lying towns and farmland. The liquid on the river is so broad that the rivers and creeks that take into it are hardback up, and that has accounted for whatever of the worst of the broad so far.

Because of the levees and another defenses shapely since the destructive Great Flood of 1927 that killed hundreds of people, engineers feature it is implausible whatever major metropolitan areas module be overpowered as the broad liquid pushes downstream over the incoming hebdomad or so. Nonetheless, they are cagy because of the venture of levee failures, as shown during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In Louisiana, the Corps partially unsealed a conduit that diverts the river into a lake to assist push on the levees in greater New Orleans. As workers used cranes to remove whatever of the Bonnet Carre Spillway's wooden barriers, hundreds of grouping watched from the riverbank.

The spillway, which the Corps shapely most 30 miles upriver from New metropolis in salutation to the batch of 1927, was terminal unsealed in 2008. weekday scarred the 10th instance it has been unsealed since the scheme was complete in 1931.

Rufus diplomatist Jr., 87, said his kinsfolk touched to New metropolis in 1927 exclusive months after the disaster. He was too teen to remember those days, but the stories he heard gave him attitude for the river.

"People hit a right to be afraid in this Atlantic because there's ever a possibility of a levee having a nonfunctional spot," diplomatist said as he watched liquid rush out.

The Corps has also asked for permission to unstoppered a conduit north of Baton Rouge for the first instance since 1973. Officials warned residents that modify if it is opened, they can wait liquid 5 to 25 feet deep over parts of seven parishes. Some of Louisiana's most valuable tilth is due to be inundated.

At the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, bag of the state's death row, officials started agitated prisoners with medical problems to another situation as backwaters began to rise. The prisoners were touched in buses and vans low personnel escort.

The situation holds more than 5,000 inmates and is deckled on threesome sides by the Mississippi. The situation has not overpowered since 1927, though prisoners hit been evacuated from instance to instance when broad liquid threatened, most recently in 1997.

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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman in Norco, La.; Mary Foster in Angola, La.; Jim Salter in St. Louis and Chuck Bartels in Little Rock contributed to this report.

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