Neighbors bracing for rising river levels

ELKHART, Ind. -- Michiana is expected to see rising river levels over the next couple days.

And neighbors in Elkhart tell me they aren’t too worried to see where the rain water from this weekend ends up.

Michiana has seen record breaking amounts of rain on Saturday alone getting a months’ worth of rain over 24 hours.

Right now, though, it's a game of wait and see---in terms of where the water will wind up.

Neighbor, Shawn McCon says, “Hopefully it’s not that bad this year though.”

He means not as bad as those horrific floods back in 2018.

Neighbor, Jeff Rice remembers, “Well the flood that came up on 2018 was our first experience since we just moved here.”

Rice, who moved to his home on the Saint Joseph River in 2017 says he remembers the flooding like it was yesterday, “It was up to the end of the garden area. But we really didn’t have to much to worry about other than the shed was under water and we did have to pump out our basement because the ground got saturated and there was no place for the water to go.”

And that’s what our ABC 57 First Warning Neighborhood Weather meteorologists are saying could happen again---though not as bad.

With the heavy amount of rain fall over such a short period of time— over the next few days we will see where that water goes!

Rice says, “I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as that particular year was.”

McCon agreed, “I don’t think it will be that big of a deal.”

These neighbors tell me they love living along the river---despite those past problems---and the potential for river flooding to do even more damage.

McCon says, “We really like the river and we like to live on the river so we wanted to stay close by.”

Rice says, “Being this close to the river is really nice in the summer and peaceful but you have opportunity that it might come up a little bit here around the winter time but you know all in all it’s worth being here for sure.”

And both residents say they are keeping a close eye on the water levels.

Rice says he has sub-pumps at the ready in case water seeps into his basement again.