Muddy, icy water spilled across roads and made houses into islands in the Lower Yukon River villages of Emmonak and Alakanuk on Saturday, as floods that inundated communities upriver the past two weeks moved closer to the sea.

The National Weather Service issued a flood warning until 5 p.m. today for about 200 miles of the Lower Yukon, from Russian Mission to the Bering Sea coast. Included are Russian Mission, Marshall, Pilot Station, St. Marys and Pitkas Point.

But the focus late Saturday was on downriver villages of Emmonak and Alakanuk. Water rose rapidly in both communities Friday night, and villagers were bracing for more high water today. Emmonak has more than 700 residents, and Alakanuk has just over 600. State emergency management officials are monitoring the situation closely.

Many houses in the villages had several feet of river water around them Saturday night, but the water appeared to be going down, residents reported. Flooding is common in the region this time of year as the river breaks up, and many dwellings sit on pilings several feet above the tundra.

Utilities in Emmonak were still functioning, though earlier in the day water rose within 6 inches of the power plant, said city manager Martin B. Moore, Sr.

No one from either community had been evacuated, and the water levels were within the norm for spring flood conditions, said Ben Balk, a Weather Service hydrologist in Anchorage who was tracking the river's breakup. Moore said Emmonak opened a school building as a shelter in case the flooding worsened. As of 8 p.m. Saturday, only one family was using it.

The road to the Emmonak airport was underwater much of the day, but the runway, which is on higher ground, was clear. Passengers were being ferried by boat. In the rest of the village, people were still able to travel by truck or four-wheeler, Moore said.

As of Saturday night, air strips at other villages under the flood warning were all open, according to the Weather Service.

Emmonak sits in the midst of a fan-shaped delta about 10 miles from the sea. Many residents spent the day watching the river, where ice chunks the size of houses floated by. Children canoed through the streets. People get a charge out of break-up, Moore explained. They were busy checking their boats and thinking about summer.

"Where there is ice moving, there is excitement and there is movement," he said. "Time for the ice to move on and get to the next season of fishing and a lot of other good things."

Lindsey Tucker spent the afternoon in Emmonak watching the river from the high ground with a number of his neighbors. He kept an eye out for logs among the ice. Once the water receded, he and relatives would go out looking for wood, he said.

It's possible this year's flooding could be worse than usual, and the river could take longer to break up, said Balk, the weather service hydrologist. That's because several miles of ice hugging the Bering Sea coast will make it harder for the river ice and water to flow out, he said. And there's still a big volume of water headed toward the villages near the river's mouth, he said.

Flooding has been worse than normal this year in many communities upstream because of a larger-than-normal volume of snow melt and somewhat thicker river ice. Damage has been heavy and residents have been displaced in several villages, particularly Eagle and Eagle Village, Stevens Village and Tanana.

Water levels at Pilot Station rose 6 feet Friday after an ice jam broke, and remained fairly steady Saturday, according to the Weather Service. Farther upriver, in Russian Mission and Marshall, water had begun to fall by Saturday afternoon.

"This water is going to take a long time to flush out," Balk said.

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