Crews Brace Levees for Illinois River Crest : Floods: National Guards, volunteers and inmates sandbag barriers as water level rises. In Missouri, clearing skies give workers a break.

Illinois National Guards, volunteers and inmates spent Sunday furiously sandbagging the Illinois River to prepare levees for a flood crest.

“The only thing holding the water back is the sandbagging efforts that have taken place,” said Chris Tamminga of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

To the west, however, crews in Missouri took a break from sandbagging as the sky cleared after a night of storms that delivered less rain than expected.

In west-central Illinois, the Illinois River had risen about eight inches since Saturday in Scott and Morgan counties, the National Weather Service said. The river had been expected to crest Thursday at 28.4 feet, two feet below the top of the levee in Scott County, but it hit that level Sunday.

Tamminga said workers were reinforcing the levees with lumber and plastic sheeting, working to add about 20 inches to the top of the barrier. About 160 National Guards were working with 215 inmates.

Tamminga couldn’t predict whether any of the levees would hold.

“Any time you’ve got water . . . up against a levee for this long a period of time, the levee becomes less and less stable,” she said.

Along the Mississippi River’s west bank, sandbagging had stopped at Ste. Genevieve, Mo.

“The sun is shining and the weather’s cooler and everybody seems to be taking a relaxed day today,” Mayor Bill Anderson said.

“We’re just hoping to hit the crest Tuesday and to start dropping.”

About 120 Missouri National Guards remained on duty at Ste. Genevieve to help haul rock to reinforce the levee. National Guards also helped patrol levees around the state and provided ferry service to communities cut off by high water.

Sandbagging also was suspended in St. Charles, Mo., near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, as the rivers and most other waterways were receding.

One-day rainfall amounts were less than one inch in Missouri and Kansas. But heavy rain fell on South Dakota, in the Missouri River watershed, with 4.5 inches at Mission Hill and 3.07 at Pickstown. A flood warning was posted for the lower Big Sioux River in southeastern South Dakota.

One death was blamed on flooding Saturday in Oklahoma. Flooding caused two deaths earlier this month in Missouri.

Along the Mississippi River in Tennessee, about 200 square miles of farmland was under water Sunday as the river continued to rise.

The river is expected to crest in about a week, and all federal levees in Tennessee were holding with “room to spare,” said Col. Ted Fox of the Army Corps of Engineers.

Fifty people had been evacuated in Tennessee’s Lauderdale County, said the county executive, Rozelle Criner.

About 50 homes were reported flooded in Lake County.

Meanwhile, severe thunderstorms, including at least one tornado, tore through San Angelo, Tex.

Large hail and high winds downed power lines and traffic lights and damaged buildings throughout the city 200 miles southwest of Ft. Worth.