A home is seen protected from encroaching floodwaters by a levee near Yazoo City, Mississippi, on Wednesday, May 18. Floodwater released from a key Mississippi River spillway surged through the Louisiana bayou on Tuesday, and levees protecting the state's two biggest cities held as river flows neared their peak. Weeks of heavy rains and runoff from an unusually snowy winter caused the Mississippi River to rise, flooding thousands of homes and 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas and evoking comparisons to historic floods in 1927 and 1937.