By Brian K. Sullivan and David Mildenberg -

Residents of Louisiana and Mississippi should be ready for flooding along tributaries, bayous and spillways as the swollen Mississippi River pushes record amounts of water south to the Gulf of Mexico, the states’ governors said.

While Louisiana monitors the Mississippi’s volume to decide if it must take pressure off the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Mississippi is watching water rise in the historic Delta region, considered the birthplace of the blues.

“There’s no reason for anybody to lose their life in this,” Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said yesterday at a press conference in Greenville. “We’ve had days and days of warning and the crest isn’t even here yet.”

The river in Memphis crested at 47.87 feet (14.5 meters) May 10, just below the 1937 record of 48.7 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The bulge of water caused by the convergence of the swollen Mississippi and Ohio rivers at Cairo, Illinois, is moving slowly downstream toward New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, which it will reach in about two weeks.

»www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-1···ood.html