Heavy rains upriver may have played a part in barges colliding with the bridge twice in the past two days.

Recent rains upstream swelled the river. And when river levels rise, it can affect the currents, said Jerry Stewart, chief of river operations for the Vicksburg District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“The higher the river stage is, the faster its velocity is,” Stewart said. “It’s all of the fronts, the rain that has gone through the Ohio and upper Mississippi (river basins). It causes the river to rise here as it rises up there.”

The river is not in danger of reaching flood stage in the near future, he said, and the water level will likely go down soon.

The river was at 45.4 on the gauge, short of the 48 it takes to get to flood stage.

Still, the river is high. This time last year, the river stage was at 16.2, and over the summer, it sank as low as 10.2.

But Stewart said it was nothing to worry about.

“This is normal high water coming through right now,” he said. “No flood stage is going to crest. And the prediction is it is going to start falling. It takes a while to get down.”

The barges hit the bridge Wednesday morning and Thursday evening. The barges were heavily loaded, and although tugboat pilots are usually seasoned, a swift current, amplified by a high river, can make steering a barge more challenging, Mississippi Department of Transportation Director Larry L. “Butch” Brown said Friday.

“The water’s high, the current is swift, and these were both very long tows,” Brown said. “The wind doesn’t affect (heavy barges) much, but the current’s propulsion of the barges can make it difficult to steer.”

The river shouldn’t have much of an effect on navigation in the near future, he said.

“It might be a bit more difficult because the water is faster, but we don’t expect it to have a big effect on navigation,” he said.