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Police evacuate residents as Mississippi river spreads to six times its usual span, threatening the city’s blues district The city of Memphis, Tennesee has been put on alert for record flooding as the waters of the Mississippi river reached a historic peak. Police went door-to-door to evacuate people from low-lying neighbourhoods after forecasters said the river could reach its peak of 14.6 metres (48ft) by Monday evening. Heavy winters in the upper midwest and an extremely wet April – with 600% more rain than normal in some southern states – have turned 2011 into a season of floods along the Mississippi’s 2,320-mile route. In Memphis, the river ran nearly three miles wide on Monday, about six times its usual span, with water lapping at Beale Street, the city’s blues district. Much of the city centre – including Elvis Presley’s Graceland – sits on high ground, but rising floodwaters from the Mississippi and its tributaries forced the evacuation of about 1,300 homes in outlying areas. City officials said 370 people were staying in shelters and more residents could be forced to flee their homes as the waters move on. Forecasters expect the waters to remain at record levels until Thursday, before a gradual fall. The flood-swollen waters still have 1,000 miles to go before they reach the Gulf of Mexico and forecasters warned there was considerable danger further down river in the days ahead, especially if there is more rain or if the levees fail. The river broke through one such temporary barrier in Memphis at the weekend, submerging an airport. Once Memphis is out of danger, the authorities will be braced for potential floods in the towns of Natchez and Vicksburg, Mississippi, where the river is expected to reach its peak on 19 May and in New Orleans on 23 May Tracey Howieson, a hydrologist in the southern division of the National Weather Service, said the record levels of the Mississippi could force a back-up of tributaries along its route, flooding rural areas. “The smaller rivers cannot flow into the Mississippi because the Mississippi is so high, so there are threats of land being inundated up near Vicksburg.” The authorities began deploying two flood diversion systems around the city of New Orleans on Monday to try to divert water in Lake Pontchartrain. This year’s floods are the worst since 1927. Army engineers last week resorted to blowing up flood levees to save the town of Cairo, Illinois. The decision drowned 130,000 acres of prime farmland. “It’s kind of a hydrological perfect storm,” said Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman at the national weather service headquarters in Washington. Forecasters had been predicting flooding since last November because of a combination of heavy snowfall in midwestern states such as Minnesota, the source of the Mississippi, and severe rain storms further south. “It’s too much precipitation in too short of a time and in the wrong places,” Vaccaro said. “It is the confluence of vast amounts of precipitation in terms of melting snowfall and rain, and then also the rain-swollen Ohio river flowing into the already swollen Mississippi.” American scientists have been warning for years that climate change is influencing extreme weather events. A US government report in 2009 predicted an increase in the number and severity of extreme weather events – heavy snows and rainfall in the mid-west and droughts in the south-west – due to climate change. North Dakota and Minnesota have seen record flooding for each of the last three years. Meanwhile, southern parts of the US, from Texas to New Mexico and California, are reporting intense droughts this year. The areas along the Mississippi have seen a marked increase in floods over the last 20 years, said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, who briefed Congress on the flooding on Monday. “All along the river, the Mississippi is reaching unprecedented flood levels,” Gleick said. “We are now moving into a situation where all weather and storm events are, to some degree, influenced by human-induced climate change. The links between climate change and extreme events can not be ignored.” In the case of the Mississippi, however, the flood risks are compounded by bad city planning and a century of trying to squeeze rivers into tighter spaces through the levee system. “Since 1993, we have seen huge numbers of new homes and business built on the flood plain despite recommendations never to do that again,” said Gleick. “I think what we are seeing along the Mississippi is all of those things: climate change, bad planning, bad development and inappropriate levees.” Flooding Tennessee United States Natural disasters and extreme weather Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk