Memphis: Plastic bottles and tree limbs slowly drifted on the surface of the brown water near Henry Allen's driveway, an ominous sign the flood was coming towards his home in a low-lying area in north-east Memphis.
As the crest of the Mississippi River crept south, rolling along the big river at a lazy pace, Allen decided it was time to flee.
Communities all along the banks of the Mississippi carefully watched the river rise, like a giant bath tub filling up with water.
Allen's house is about nine feet above the current water level, but the water has already inundated more than eight houses on his street, approaching the front windows of a few homes, nearly covering their mail boxes.
"We can't do nothing ... This is history making right here," Allen said.
Record river levels, some dating as far back as the 1920s, were expected to be broken in some parts.
Already at its highest level ever, Lake Champlain surpassed flood stage by 3 feet on Friday, leaving hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged in a slowly unfolding catastrophe on island communities and the New York and Vermont sides of the 120-mile-long lake.
"I had a guy from the state tell me that this was the slowest disaster he's ever seen," Clinton County Emergency Services Director Eric Day of Plattsburgh, New York, where about 100 residents of an apartment complex evacuated on Friday, said.
