VENICE COPES WITH RECORD THIRD EXCEPTIONAL TIDE

Venetians coped with another exceptional tide Sunday in a season that is setting records while other parts of Italy wrestled with a cornucopia of weather woes, from rain-swollen rivers to high winds to an out-of-season avalanche.

Stores and museums in Venice were mostly closed in the hardest-hit area around St. Mark's Square, but tourists donning high rubber boots or even hip waders still came to witness and photograph the spectacle. Most were disappointed when officials closed down the historic square as winds ripple across the rising waters.

The doors of the famed St. Mark's Basilica were securely shut to the public, while officials took precautions - stacking sandbags in canal-side windows - to prevent water from entering the crypt again.

Venice's Tide Office said the peak tide of 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) hit just after 1 p.m., as a weather front off the coast blocked southerly winds from the Adriatic Sea from pushing the tide to the predicted level of 1.6 meters (5 feet, 2 inches).

Still it marked the third time since Tuesday night's 1.87-meter flood -the worst in 53 years - that water levels in Venice had topped 1.5 meters.

Since records began in 1872, that level had never been reached even twice in one year, let alone three times in one week.

Many store owners in the swanky area around St. Mark's completely emptied their shops, while others raised wares as high as possible and counted on automatic pumping systems to keep the water at bay.

In at least one luxury boutique, employees used water vacuums and big squeegee mops to keep the brackish lagoon waters from advancing.

Venice's mayor has put the flooding damage at hundreds of millions of euros and Italian officials have declared a state of emergency for the area. They say Venice is both sinking into the mud and facing rising sea levels due to climate change. But tourists keep arriving, some tying plastic garbage bags high up on their legs when their kneehigh boots were too short.

Luca D'Acunto and his girlfriend Giovanna Maglietta surveyed the rising water from a bridge, wondering how to make their way to their nearby hotel in their colorful yet inadequate rubber boots.

"We made the reservation this week before the floods and had paid already, so we came," said D'Acunto, a 28year-old from Naples.