FOLEY, Mo. — Amid the battle to hold back the swollen Mississippi River, some towns in northeastern Missouri and Illinois got an unwelcome surprise Saturday as river levels rose higher than projected.
Elsewhere, dozens of wildfires erupted in California, where some parts of the state have endured a blistering heat wave.
Recent levee breaks north of Canton, not far from the Iowa line, had allowed the river level to drop there and at other towns far north of St. Louis.
Officials knew the water would rise again to crests expected during the weekend, and while the amount of the increase caught them off guard, it didn’t make things any worse.
The Mississippi reached 26.3 feet Saturday morning at Canton after dipping below 23 feet two days earlier, and it was expected to crest later in the day at 26.4 feet. That’s still three feet below the top of the city’s levee.
Forecasters said Saturday afternoon that the river would crest several inches higher than expected in Hannibal and at Quincy, Ill., where it was set to crest late in the day or this morning more than two feet below the 1993 flood peak.
Downriver, near St. Louis, the latest federal forecast called for lower crests than predicted a day earlier.
Also Saturday, thunderstorms sparked as many as 75 wildfires in a wilderness area in far Northern California on Saturday as officials farther south got close to containing a blaze that destroyed several homes and forced thousands to evacuate.
The fires in Shasta-Trinity National Forest, near Redding, range in size from less than an acre to more than 750 acres. None immediately threatened homes, said Forest Service spokesman Michael Odle.
South of San Francisco, a fire that burned several homes and closed a stretch of highway was 90 percent contained and could be surrounded by the end of the day, said officials of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It had charred 630 acres, or less than a square mile.
To the south along the coast, firefighters worked against a nearly 80-square-mile fire in a remote part of the Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County. It was about half contained Saturday.
The mercury surged up and down the state on Saturday: It was 95 degrees in San Jose, 105 in San Diego, 107 in Burbank and 107 in San Luis Obispo. The National Weather Service said temperatures were expected to cool by at least 5 degrees today.
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