BATON ROUGE- The rising Mississippi River has crested Baton Rouge at a slightly lower than expected level of 43.3 feet. But officials said Monday the high water is expected to stick around for a while.
    
Forecasting how long the river will remain above flood stage is difficult because there are several factors that come into play, from the opening of floodgates at the Bonnet Carre spillway to the amount of water that has been stored in parts of the flood plain.
    
W. Scott Lincoln with the National Weather Service Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center says that all the water in storage needs to come out.
    
The river will continue to slowly drop over the coming weeks until it's below flood stage of 35 feet at Baton Rouge in the second week of February.