The Arkansas River at Little Rock crested Wednesday, providing a moment of respite for some homeowners and raising tensions for others as backwater seeps farther into Pulaski County.
Rainstorms expected to hit western and central Arkansas over the next seven days instead have shifted northeast, and it's hoped they will mostly spare flooded areas along the Arkansas River, National Weather Service meteorologist Lance Pyle said.
Communities along the Arkansas River have dealt with flooding since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began releasing water in May from flood reduction lakes in Oklahoma after northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas received more than 7 inches of rain.
[DRONE VIDEO: New footage shows Little Maumelle River flooding near Pinnacle Valley]
"Today was the first day I could just breathe and say, 'maybe the worst is over'" Pinnacle Valley homeowner Wes Sutton said Wednesday. "There were a lot of prayers answered today."
When Sutton drove out to the home he and his brother built fewer than two years ago off Burnett Road near the Little Maumelle River, he expected to be placing sandbags around the porch. Instead, the water had dropped by about 2 inches. Water lapped at the edges of Sutton's porch, leaving only a strip of dry, elevated land near the driveway.
"You really can't go by the [Arkansas] river predictions here," Sutton said. "This is all back-flow. They could say the river was going to rise 4 inches, and we'd see 9 [inches]."
Much of Pinnacle Valley Road was closed Wednesday after water swallowed the street and moved toward several homes. Sutton said he offered his driveway to neighbors, some of whom are dealing with higher flood levels and no longer have a street to travel down.
"Now it's like clockwork," Sutton said, smiling. "They get in their boats and go to work in the morning and get back in to go home at night. My driveway became a boat ramp."
There is normally a pasture full of horses in front of the Suttonses' home, but it was all water Wednesday. A sheriff's deputy was posted near Pinnacle Valley Road and Beau Vue Drive barring nonresidents from crossing the flooded street.
"Right now, other than Two Rivers State Park, we're primarily dealing with backwater," Pulaski County sheriff's office spokesman Lt. Cody Burk said. "We're seeing places that we never would have expected to flood filling with backwater."
Along with Pinnacle Valley Road, the sheriff's office has barricaded more than 20 roads across the county because of high water, Burk said.
"Some of these are really far from the river, but they're in low lands or they're near a creek," he said.
Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Melody Daniel said backwater flooding isn't considered different from direct flooding, though it has some particular attributes. Backwater can often become stagnant as it spreads away from flow areas, she said, and still water can mean increased bug populations.
Although the Arkansas River is more than a mile from his home in the Pinnacle Valley area, Oscar Dyer Jr. said he feared Wednesday that the water may have gotten inside overnight.
"I've been here 81 years, and my parents lived there before me," Dyer said. "We've never seen anything like this."
Dyer said he couldn't be sure if his home flooded or not. The roads were flooded so high he couldn't get to his residence.
"I just wonder what all we're going to lose," he said.
Near the southern edge of Little Rock's city limits on Richland Drive, Dick Turpen said he, too, was in a waiting game. Backwater more than 2 feet deep filled the streets, and even though some trucks passed through the water, Turpen wouldn't chance it.
"My wife and I, we went to Walmart and bought all the groceries we could hold, and we're not moving again," Turpen said. "I'm 83 years old. We moved into this house a year after we got married -- that's 53 years ago."
[STORY: Boy, 9, swept by flash flood in western Arkansas, clings to vine]
The latest forecasts indicate that Little Rock won't receive the amount of flooding originally expected, but Turpen said the water has nowhere to go.
"I know they had to plug the drains, but where's the water going to go now?" he said, gesturing toward the brown, murky water that filled his street.
More rain
Though the heaviest of the expected rainfall is moving northeast of the state, Little Rock still has a 70% chance of rain today and Friday, and a 50% chance Saturday.
National Weather Service meteorologist Sean Clarke said any rain could cause problems for homes or drains surrounded by sandbags.
"The rain could get trapped on the other side of the sandbags, so you would have floodwaters on one side and rain on the other," he said.
Flash flooding also will be more likely because the ground is saturated.
"There is nothing to soak up the water so it will just slide off, causing the potential of flash flooding," Clarke said. "Also if there is high winds then trees could easily be more uprooted."
[RELATED: Residents hold hope, fear worst with Lake Conway still on the rise]
Multiple counties in Northwest Arkansas were under a flash-flood warning Wednesday after a torrent of rain dropped several inches of water quickly, Pyle said.
"Storms [Wednesday night] are not moving too much. They're sitting and dumping a lot of water where they're located," Pyle said.
In Fort Smith, where the Arkansas River has finally dropped out of the major flood stage, a Police Department spokesman said flash flooding caused three vehicle accidents after drivers attempted to pass through flooded roadways.
Though Burk said some officials are concerned about the Woodson Levee near Wrightsville, Solomon Graves, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction, said none of the department's properties along the Arkansas River appear to be in imminent risk of flooding.
[GALLERY: New photos show Arkansas River, Lake Conway flooding]
Water held back by the Woodson Levee behind the Wrightsville Unit in southeast Pulaski County has already crested, Graves said, and the levees were holding water back from the sprawling farmland surrounding the Cummins and Varner units in Lincoln County.
"Barring something catastrophic, neither Wrightsville nor Cummins should be in imminent threat," Graves said.
Graves said prisoners at the Cummins and Varner units were filling sandbags to be distributed around the state. At a meeting of the Board of Corrections on Wednesday, board member William "Dubs" Byers, a pastor from Dumas, said "they've come in handy, they've saved some properties."
Information for this article was contributed by John Moritz of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
[MORE: Pine Bluff, Pendleton girded, await river's wrath]
A Section on 06/06/2019