Yueyang, China ? The water level in central China’s Dongting Lake surged well past the danger mark Saturday as forecasters predicted a new round of showers could further swell rivers flowing into the lake.

The storms, expected throughout the next three days, could strain dikes on the lake and along the rivers, threatening six cities and dozens of villages in Hunan province.

A Chinese man relaxes in the doorway of a flooded warehouse near the Dongting Lake waterfront at Yueyang, in China's central Hunan province. Rising water Saturday continued to pressure a series of dikes around the massive lake, increasing concern about massive flooding.

Despite the rising water, people near the lake went about business as usual, calmed by a common belief among flood workers, dike monitors and residents that the embankments would hold. “I think they’re strong enough. No problem,” waitress Huang Xiaohua said.

In Yueyang, a lakeside city of 600,000, people sang karaoke outside a supermarket about a minute walk from the lake. Vendors along the waterfront were doing a bustling business serving cold drinks and stir-frying meals. The pier was full of boats selling fish.

An official in Hunan’s anti-flood headquarters said Dongting’s water level was about six feet above the danger mark on Saturday. The lake was rising by half an inch per hour, said the official, who would only give his surname, Zhang.

Authorities define the danger mark as the point when the water puts deadly amounts of pressure on the elaborate system of dikes at the edge of the 1,560-square-mile Dongting, China’s second-largest freshwater lake.

In the neighboring province of Hubei, officials declared a state of emergency in the industrial city of Wuhan, Xinhua News Agency reported. China’s longest river, the Yangtze, flows through the city, and the waterway was six inches above its warning level and threatened to rise higher if the forecasted storms come, Xinhua said.

At Dongting, officials were keeping a close watch on the lake’s 580 miles of dikes, and more than 1 million workers and soldiers have been mobilized to fortify the embankments during the past week.