Menacing Red River appears to level off

The Red River appeared to level off Saturday, as forecasters revised their predictions and said the river would remain around 41 feet for several days.

By 10 a.m., the river height was at 40.69 feet, slightly lower than its level earlier Saturday of 40.82 feet.

"The good news, or shall we say the cautiously optimistic news, is that the river is behaving rather nicely for us now," said Greg Gust of the National Weather Service.

"The official terms are that the crest is occurring. We don't believe that the actual, ultimate crest has occurred yet," Gust said, speaking at a news conference in Moorhead, Minnesota -- across the Red River from Fargo.

Gust said forecasters had revised earlier predictions. For the next several days to a week, the river is expected to "stay very near 41 feet with fluctuations of half a foot to a foot, meaning, we could rise well above 41 feet," he said.

Earlier, the agency had said the river could reach as high as 43 feet, the height of the city's dikes.

Meanwhile, North Dakota and Minnesota residents warily waited to see if miles of levees and sandbags would hold.

"Nobody in this valley, no matter how old they are ... has ever seen levels like this," Fargo, North Dakota, Mayor Dennis Walaker told CNN about the river's record-breaking height.

The water level has broken the previous record of 40.1 feet, set in 1897.

Above-freezing temperatures, followed by heavy rains this week, have caused the Red River and its tributaries to swell, but Fargo's mayor vowed to "go down swinging."

"We've been battling this thing for eight days, and we're still ahead of the ball," Walaker said Saturday.

Overnight temperatures below 10 degrees Fahrenheit had slowed the river's rise.