DEER PARK — The water is starting to rise.

In Deer Park, water from the Mississippi River has crossed the road to the point of being an estimated 18 inches of water deep, Deer Park resident Carlton Greer said.

“Most of the folks (going into Deer Park) are leaving their vehicles out, and the ones who are going in are probably using a tractor,” Greer said.

The low-lying, unincorporated community situated between the old and new levee system is one of the first places in Concordia Parish to take on water when the river rises, several feet before it is considered to be at flood stage.

But if river forecasts are correct, the recent swell in water won’t encroach much further into Deer Park.

The river is expected to stand at 43.4 feet this morning, a little more than four feet shy of flood stage, which is set at 48 feet above gauge zero.

At the Natchez-Vidalia pass, gauge zero is set at 17.28 feet above sea level.

Current forecasts predict the river will rise to 43.6 by Sunday, will stand at that level for a day and then start to fall by Tuesday — a far cry from last year’s high water, which at this time stood at 54 feet and was rising.

Over the next five days, the National Weather Service has forecast two to three inches of rain to fall in the middle Mississippi River and lower parts of the Ohio River Valley, Jackson-based NWS Hydrologist Marty Pope said.

“About two inches of that will actually fall in the next 24 hours or so, and the rest will fall between about Sunday and Tuesday,” he said.

Melting snow in the northern reaches of the Mississippi River and the Ohio River Valley is a factor, but what will matter most is the amount of rainfall that falls on the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Arkansas river basins, Pope said.

When considering the short-term flood forecast, the high water has already crested at Cairo, Ill.

“When you get your crest and you get rainfall behind it, it takes a little more to fill it in behind the crest,” Pope said. “Luckily, the heaviest rain in our area will not occur between the Sunday and Tuesday timeframe.”

The seasonal flood forecast that the NWS released earlier this spring predicts normal rainfall between April and June.

“Rainfall last year was above normal,” Pope said. “It’s been a sort of normal spring rise this year.”

Even if this spring’s water is just a normal rise, people in Deer Park are going to keep an eye on the river, Greer said.

“People down here normally stay prepared,” he said.