I have two sisters and a sister-in-law and their families who live in the small town of Morehouse, in New Madrid County and my mother in Miner, Missouri (Near Sikeston) who have already evacuated from their homes. Morehouse is about 40 miles west of the Mississippi. The Mississippi is not their primary problem but ordinarily calm and small Little River, which runs through Morehouse and is now a very full and very large river flooding the entire town. Plus the Wahite, about 2 miles west of the town is over it's levees
I was born and raised there and in all my 65 years there's never been a flood there.
I can't imagine what Diversion Channel in Cape looks like, it backs up on a some what regular basis anyway. Scott City, Benton and all points south of Cape are in danger too, all those small streams and rivers dumping in the Mississippi have no place to go.
I haven’t been down to see the Diversion Channel, but Dutchtown is battling to stay dry, so I imagine there are now large lakes in the area. (thirty years ago, I saw a sailboat sailing over a flooded field).
Moorehouse is getting wet. Apparently MODOT made a makeshift levee on a highway to keep it open and that caused the water to flood Moorehouse.
The river is so high that it is backing up into the little creeks and steams that feed into it, causing flooding away from the river where you might not expect it.
I was born and raised down in the Bootheel which was once the catch basin (AKA an uninhabitable swamp) for the Little River drainage.
More than a few people don’t know the Little River Drainage District project during early part of the 20th century was of massive proportions. More soil was dug and displaced than during construction of the Panama Canal. The hundreds of miles of smaller drainage ditches and levees cumulated in five or six large pararell ditches known as the Floodways, in which I did a lot of fishing as a kid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAKQIB2cYbM
The Floodways then drain into Big Lake AR. This video shows what all of the Bootheel country once looked like before the Little River Drainage District Project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKuvIyc2PK0