By Dan Klepal
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The lower parking lot of Mike Fink's restaurant was under water Tuesday. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

The Ohio River crept a few inches closer to flood stage Tuesday afternoon, but river watchers say it will take much more than the light rain predicted for later this week to cause the river to swell beyond its banks.

Expected to crest today at 45.7 feet, the Ohio is still more than 6 feet below flood stage.

That's good news for thousands of people whose homes or businesses are in low-lying areas of the Tristate, but most of them are still nervously watching the river flow.

On the east side of town, in California, Bill Rothwell is using water to fight water. Harbormaster at the Harbour Towne Yacht Club on Kellogg Avenue, Rothwell said workers there were filling up the swimming pool to keep it from coming loose and floating away if the water continues to rise.

"We fill the pool to match the elevation of the river. Otherwise, it could pop right out of the ground," Rothwell said. "Everything here floats, so we've got to secure the dock and add floats to our walkways so people can get from our upper parking lot to their boats. The river is coming up fast.

"Around here, if it doesn't float, the river will get it."

The last devastating flood came in March of 1997, when a deluge of 10 inches of rain fell in parts of Adams and Brown counties, about an hour's drive east of Cincinnati. That, combined with significant rainfall and snowmelt in Pennsylvania and the Appalachian Mountains, caused the Ohio to crest at 64.7 feet on March 5 that year.

That storm did more than flood cities; it also claimed lives.

HIGH WATER MARKS

Some of the highest Ohio River levels recorded in Cincinnati in the past century (flood stage is 52 feet): Jan. 26, 1937: 79.9 feet. April 1, 1913: 69.9 feet. March 7, 1945: 69.2 feet. March 11, 1964: 66.2 feet. Jan. 21, 1907: 65.2 feet. April 18, 1948: 64.8 feet. March 5, 1997: 64.7 feet. March 21, 1933: 63.6 feet. Jan. 14, 1913: 62.2 feet. Sources: National Weather Service, Enquirer research

A mass of warm tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico churned north along the Mississippi River toward the Ohio River Valley in late February 1997, spawning tornadoes in a 260-mile swath of devastation that killed 28 people.

Driving rain first caused the streams and creeks that feed the Ohio to swell in Kentucky and southern Ohio. As those tributaries poured into the Ohio, it swelled by 1 foot per hour during one 24-hour stretch, despite the storm largely skipping past Cincinnati.

Warren Burns, a hydrologist at the Ohio River Forecast Center in Wilmington, said nothing like that is predicted this week.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the depth of the river with its series of locks and dams. It takes a massive storm to breach that system.

"There may be some minor flooding in places along the river, particularly upstream from Cincinnati," Burns said. "Those who live and work on the river have to be careful even before we get to flood stage. Otherwise it's real minor at this point."

In fact, most people in the Tristate can thank ice for their flood protection - specifically, really old ice.

The three glaciers that first started freezing this land some 2 million years ago - the last of which thawed about 50,000 years ago - left behind Cincinnati's seven hills and a unique river city. The topography here is higher than most Midwestern river cities, said David Nash, a professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati who is an expert on floods and their effects on topography.

Nash said the Wisconsinan glacier left behind the incline from Third to Fourth streets downtown. That glacier is what carved out our modern landscape, he said.

"When you go over Fourth Street, you go over fairly steep incline," Nash said. "The area below that is in the modern flood plain. It's one of the reasons the early settlements were abandoned. That's why Cincinnati is where it is."

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com