"This water that we're seeing coming by is moving 2 million cubic feet per second," said Reichling of the situation on Sunday outside Memphis. "To use an analogy, in one second that water would fill up a football field 44 feet deep."  Despite a lack of new rain, the water levels rose further around Memphis to 47.6 feet late Sunday afternoon, said National Weather Service spokesman Richard Okulski. On Tuesday morning, authorities expect it to finally crest outside the western Tennessee city at 48 feet -- just short of the 48.7-feet record set in 1937, when Reichling said more than 500 people died and 20 million acres flooded.  "It's a very powerful river. It looks like it's running very slowly, but it has a very strong current," said Bob Nations, director of preparedness in Shelby County, Tennessee. "We still don't know (exactly what) the river might do.  The crisis stems in large part from a deluge of rainfall over the past month further up the Mississippi River. Reichling said that, over one two-week stretch, there was about 600% more precipitation than usual. This contributed to a bulge, or crest, of especially high fast-moving water that has made its way downriver.  The deluge has put tremendous pressure on the levees and other systems that aim to keep the river system in check.  Reichling noted that a major problem -- and the cause of much of the flooding seen Sunday in Memphis and beyond -- is that such tributaries as the Wolf River are overflowing because there's not enough room in the Mississippi for them to filter into.  Still, while heavy rains may have contributed to the problem originally, authorities said that the weather now appears to be working in their favor. Only minimal rain is expected over the coming days, with daytime temperatures forecast to be in the upper 80s and 90s through Thursday, at which point the water levels should begin to creep back down.
Bright skies over Memphis, Tennessee, belied a potential disaster Sunday as a surge of fast-moving water threatened the city and many other communities along the Mississippi River.Days earlier, the