Some good news and some bad news will soon float past Natchez.

The bad news is the Mississippi River is expected to rise to potentially historic levels. The good news is the river is not expected to reach its peak for a couple of weeks, so we have a little time to prepare.

While no one, here on earth at least, truly knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what the weather and the river will do, river forecasting has become pretty darned good in the last few years.

Chances are good that, if the river’s crest is not a record, it will be very close to one.

The river is expected to rise significantly in early May, eventually cresting in mid-May.

On the Mississippi side, most of Natchez is on fairly high ground, though some portions of the county will certainly flood.

In Louisiana, flooding will likely occur in all of the usual places, and significant water pressure may begin causing problems on the Vidalia Riverfront as the water levels rise.

But, it’s important to remember that panic never helped anyone solve much of anything. We all need to remain calm, think through anything that we need to do reasonably and listen to local emergency management leaders when they issue flood warnings and directives.

The Mississippi River is an incredibly powerful entity on a low-water day. When it swells with floodwater, it can become an incredibly destructive force as well.

We all need to stay alert, but calm, as the water rises. If we’re lucky, this will mostly just be a slight annoyance with no long-lasting ill effects for our community.