Current cold weather followed by a warming trend is creating perfect conditions for ice jams, say officials. (CBC)

Authorities north of Winnipeg are in a holding pattern, waiting until mounting pressure from the Red River finally budges ice jams near Lower Fort Garry and Lockport.

Officials say the situation is currently under control because the cold weather on Thursday and Friday has slowed the flow of water. But that has also created the conditions for forming more ice jams, they say.

On Thursday morning, an ice jam that had caused severe flooding in St. Andrews throughout the previous day finally broke loose. But a couple of hours later it reformed 13 kilometres downstream at Lower Fort Garry.

Not long after, the Lockport jam formed. Together, they are choking the river and backing the water southward, threatening several homes.

Emergency crews and volunteers have been sandbagging and building up dikes, but the river flow has since slowed so they have also attempted to get a jump on the next likely jam by sandbagging areas north of the Lower Fort Garry ice, said Paul Guyader, the emergency co-ordinator for the rural municipality of St. Andrews.

"[We] will be putting people on alert north of Selkirk going towards Breezy Point because as [the ice] moves along it'll be them next," said St. Andrews Reeve Don Forfar.

Thaw coming next week

The present holding pattern is expected to change very quickly over the next few days with warmer weather on the way. The temperatures are forecast to crack the freezing mark by Sunday and push as high as 6 C by Tuesday.

That will thaw the thinner ice and allow the river to start moving more quickly. If the ice jams haven't been dislodged, there could be more flash flooding as there was earlier in the week.

Four rural municipalities just north of Winnipeg — St. Andrews, St. Clements, East St. Paul and West St. Paul — all declared states of emergency on Wednesday as overland flooding washed out roads and submerged yards.

Although the Red River Floodway usually protects those communities, the ice jam prevented the water from moving, causing it to flood the banks.

About 10 homes in St. Andrews were flooded — some above the main level of the house — and another 30-40 families were evacuated from their homes. In East St. Paul, as many as 100 homes were on high alert.

The threat in the next few days will be heightened by the melting of 15 centimetres of fresh snow that blanketed the Winnipeg region over the past three days.

Guyader said the issue of overland flooding looms large because the newly built dikes will trap melt water inside yards, preventing it from escaping back into the river.

Updated flood forecast coming for Manitoba

The province is expected to release an updated flood forecast this afternoon.

Despite all of the new precipitation and the record flood levels in Fargo, the peak level predicted for Winnipeg has so far remained on par with that of the 1979 flood, which is considered the second-worst in the region.

Manitoba Water Stewardship spokesman Steve Topping said there are two main reasons why the levels for Winnipeg are expected to be lower than Fargo: The snow pack is lower in Manitoba and the Red River channel through Winnipeg has a greater capacity to hold the water.

The crest is anticipated to hit Winnipeg between April 12-17.

Topping said the province as a whole is in "tremendous shape" to get through the flood without the damage experienced in 1997, when tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes in North Dakota, Minnesota and southern Manitoba.

That so-called flood of the century caused an estimated $4.4 billion US in damage between Grand Forks, N.D., and Winnipeg.

Since then, the province has done much to prepare for the threat, said Topping. In addition to a $600-million expansion of the floodway around Winnipeg, more communities south and north of the city are also better prepared.

Eighteen community ring dikes are now in place, which means 95 per cent of the valley is protected, Topping said. In comparison, there were only eight ring dikes in place in 1997.