Pictures: 'Amazon Venice' scrambles to stay above floods

The rivers have been swelling for weeks in Brazil's Amazon region, and residents in a town that bills itself as `The Venice of Amazonas' traded motorcycles for canoes and are clambering atop fresh-laid planks inside their homes to stay dry.

Residents navigate flooded streets in Anama, Amazonas state, Brazil.

Anama, home to 14,000 people on a tributary of the Solimoes River that flows toward capital Manaus, is just one municipality of dozens in Amazonas state that has seen life upended by unusual rainfall.

Amazonas's civil defense secretariat warned the flood could soon be biggest recorded in the last century, and said 350,000 people have already been affected.

Twenty of Amazonas' municipalities are in a situation of emergency, and 22 have rivers spilling over their banks. The latter group includes capital Manaus, where people have built makeshift bridges.

Dogs stand on a porch ledge above floodwater in Anama.

The Negro River, which flows past Manaus to meet the Solimoes River, could reach its highest-ever level within days, the state's government said this week.

Increased precipitation is associated with the La Nina phenomenon, by which cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean impact global weather patterns.

Noemia Ferreira Ribeiro stands on an elevated floor that was placed to avoid floodwater under her home in Anama.

Residents navigate flooded streets in Anama.

A residents navigates through a flooded street in Anama.

Residents build raised floors in a flooded home in Anama.

Residents navigate flooded streets in Anama.