Slow caravans of four-wheel-drives, pickups and SUVs were wending their way through the streets around Fox Island and Southport on Tuesday, as residents of the area picked up and left their increasingly-water-surrounded homes after they received automated phone calls informing them the evacuation of the neighborhood had become mandatory.

Through driving sleet and a whiteout, tan water stood out against the new layer of white snow as the flooding crept through the winding streets, leaving some homes stranded on their small knolls, and others with water up to their foundations and higher, sliding through outbuildings and garages and inundating driveways.

Sections of the neighborhood around Larson and Tavis roads were blocked off to traffic by mid-morning Tuesday where sections of the road were under as much as 3 feet of water. Patrol cars were turning back traffic except for homeowners at Riverwood Drive and off Burleigh Avenue access streets to Southport and Fox Island.

Homeowner Tim Keller had driven through about 2 feet of water with his SUV to park beside his garage. Water had found the foundations of the outbuildings on his property, but the house was still above the water level by midday.

Jackie Bishof and her family, including two dogs, were parked at the road entrance to their home. Her husband had parked the pickup there the night before, just in case, she said.

The family had been up Monday night watching the water level, and when they received the message of the mandatory evacuation, Bishof put on a pair of camouflage waders she never thought she'd need to wear and trekked through the standing water to the vehicle. Since the family has two dogs, they made reservations at a local motel that takes pets.

The family has lived in their home for three years, she said.

Ken Ness and Lance Tollefson were pulling on waders at the home of Diane and Tom Davis. Tom Davis was on a business trip to New York, so Ness, Diane Davis' brother, and Tollefson, her son-in-law, were helping her to move some things in the house to an upper level before she had to leave, they said.

Ness himself had lived nearby in the same neighborhood until December, he said.

On the Mandan side of the river, a crew from Moritz Sport and Marine was towing pontoons to higher ground adjacent to The Broken Oar near Marina Bay, after the rising water had floated them overnight.

Gary Emter, Moritz service manager, said that the crew had moved six to higher ground Monday, thinking that they were high enough, but that Tuesday morning the water had found them again.

Emter said the crew would tow about 20 pontoons out of the water on Tuesday.

"In the 15 years I've been doing this, I've never seen it like this," Emter said.

(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)