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The mayor of a drenched Manitoba town says he's never seen flooding as bad as this year's situation, and believes the worst is yet to come.

"We're being hit double at the same time... we got floods from the fields, over land flooding for the last week. We've never seen this, ever," Clifford Dearman, mayor of West St. Paul, told Â鶹ӰÊÓnet.

"West St. Paul is prepared. Are we prepared enough? I'm not sure yet, but we're working hard."

Dearman said the town, located just northeast of Winnipeg, has been working almost 24 hours a day for the last week to control flooding. He added that 28 people are working on flood control, compared to the usual four.

Currently, crews are focused on over-land flooding, which is expected to get worse over the coming days as warmer weather melts snow.

Frozen culverts, a byproduct of an extra-cold winter, have continued to thwart the flood control efforts.

"But there's so much in the culverts and it's such a cold winter it froze up all the culverts a couple times -- and it just froze up last week again. Trying to keep up with it, is just incredible. It's never been seen before," Dearman said.

A mayor of a nearby town is calling on all able-bodied residents to come out and lend a hand as rising waters threaten more than 200 homes in the community.

Steve Strang, mayor of St. Clements, Manitoba, said his municipality has had "everything thrown at us."

"We're dealing with one of the biggest floods the province has ever seen," Strang told CTV's Canada AM on Monday morning.

"Within my community alone we're preparing for a worst case scenario of over 200 homes. Those homes have been given notice and we're asking them to prepare themselves for that situation."

The community northwest of Winnipeg is on the banks of the Red River. Strang said the rural town has been dealing with the effects of ice-induced flooding, overland flooding caused by frozen culverts, and severe weather conditions

"We've put out hundreds of thousands of bags already. The municipalities are working very well, we're working with the provincial government, we've brought in every possible resource we could to address this issue," he said.

"The volunteerism within the community has been phenomenal."

However, Strang acknowledged the community isn't out of the woods yet, noting that more precipitation is expected on Tuesday, and asked anyone who is able to call the town's volunteer hotline.

Further south on the Red River in St. Andrews, Manitoba, municipal crews and volunteers were dealing with the same issues.

Workers were struggling around the clock to fill and place sandbags to protect homes from the rising river, and to clear the frozen culverts.

Some have been working for close to a week, often with little sleep, Paul Guyader, an emergency co-ordinator for the rural municipalities of St. Andrews and West St. Paul, told The Canadian Press.

"It's a week now we've been doing this ... you're talking four, five, six public works guys. In my one community we've got 25 volunteer firefighters and those guys have been going 24/7, so of course it's wearing them down."

He said the small public works crews supervising private contractors who are helping melt ice that is blocking culverts. The contractors are unfamiliar with the area and need directions to the outlets -- stretching their limited resources.

Red River water levels are expected to start cresting in Manitoba in the next couple of weeks, meaning the worst may be yet to come.

Guyader said he is hoping against a double whammy from a big melt, more ice jams and a rise in river levels - creating a potential perfect storm.

"If we get any combination of those three together, this situation is going to be a lot bigger," he told CP.

Also worrying is the fact that the floodway around Winnipeg can't be used until the ice starts to move in the river.

The provincial government said that's not likely to happen until next weekend.