Posted on 05/10/2011 8:27:10 AM PDT by george76
Virtually unreported by the national media - because it might detract from President Obama's victory lap...
The "Father of Waters," as President Lincoln called the Mississippi, is on a historic rampage. Almost no one now living remembers such a river crest.
The levees were blown on the Missouri side of the river, below Cairo, last Monday night. Memphis is being surrounded by water. New Orleans will not even see the river crest before Memorial Day Weekend...
Is CNN going wall-to-wall?
Nope.
...
What might this historic flood mean? Well, no one's talking, no one's predicting.
Because doing so might affect the chances of That Man in the White House to win re-election in 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/Corps-Up-to-25-feet-of-water-could-spill.html
Click on the map on the left side of this article. It looks like a parish wide swath, 7 parishes long will be flooded to at least 5 feet. IMO the River is changing course.
I read an article about the floods and barge transportation on the river. They said that although the large numbers of barges on the river have a tendency to raise the water level, the transportation dept had no plans to curtail or slow down the barge traffic because it would slow the economy. The barges carry ore, coal, grain and auto parts.
It’s crony capitalism trumping the red statevoters and farming.
If the Mississippi River levees would fail around NOLA, Katrina would be remembered as a tea party.
I am not an hydrologist but I suspect what you read is a bunch of hooey. Although there is a large number of barges and ocean going vessels on the river that river is so wide and deep that all of them combined would not raise the river level even an inch. Since the traffic is widely dispersed along the very long and wide river that also minimizes their affect on the river level.
I have lived in Baton Rouge and it is really scary to drive up that tall levee and upon reaching the top see that the river is 15 - 20 feet higher than the land the levee is protecting. It is also interesting to see a large ocean going vessel going up the river, look at the ship and then look back down the levee to the flat ground and observe the discontinuity of the two.
Since the river is still within the levee what is causing the flooding in Memphis? Are there things that drain into the river, like sewers, etc., which are backing up? Is there another creek or river that drains into the Mississippi and is backing up?
I don't remember the exact year but during the late 60's or early 70's I flew over the area between Dallas and Cleveland, Ohio, during a flood stage and at 30,000 feet there was water as far as the eye could see. The Red River, Big Black and Yazoo rivers were all backed up and flooding their own areas.
Who are 'THEY' and WHY are they so stupid?
It was someone with dept of transportation that regulates the commercial traffic on the river. Evidently there is some system like locks on the river that they have control over. It was a woman that they were interviewing.
Concordia Parish is a little upriver of where the Acadians live ... and the old Creole planters .... Bordelonville, down near the Red River (which is something of a boundary), is about as high up the Mississippi as the Acadian names come.
You're more in the redneck part of the state, which includes the Florida Parishes and everything north of the Red River pretty much. That's Huey Long's Louisiana.
If and when that happens, Morgan City gets redistributed all over the Sigsbee Abyssal Plain.
That town will be all river channel, wide and deep.
They will be very, very careful about opening the flood-control structure at the head of the Atchafalaya River near Simmesport. It tends to scour vigorously with volume releases, and there is reasonable fear that it might undermine the flood-control structure as a whole in a big flood event and break out ("crevasse, avulse") permanently. If it did, all hell would break loose all the way to the sea.
As lg pointed out, Concordia Parish is a little beyond the Arctic Circle, so far as coonass are concerned.
It is, indeed, Huey Long's Louisiana and the proper terminology is "stump jumpers".
True fact. The "Katrina" flooding was caused by pump failures and Lake Pontchartrain getting over its levees. The river is 15' or so higher than Lake Pontchartrain.
During the day or so before "Katrina" arrived, my sister, holing up in her husband's office in the Tulane Medical School and hospital, saw med students measuring 21' up the side of the building below her with tape measures and chalk. They were measuring how deep the water would get if the river levee failed.
As things turned out, lake water was 6' deep around the building during the flood, and about 10-12" of water got into the first floor. At least it kept the mobs out of the hospital -- they forced their way into Children's Hospital a few blocks away instead and cleaned out the pharmacy there, menacing the staff as they did so.
That would be the largest natural disaster to ever hit this country. It wouldn't just affect the areas where the Mississippi moves to a different channel. The infrastructure damage including pipelines that feed other parts of the country would be devastating to the economy. As an example we would probably see real long lasting gasoline shortages that would have further repercussions.
USGS maps of the area (I'm thinking of Louisiana specifically and the area around Simmesport) show many ancient cutoffs, meander bends and bow lakes. The river has changed course many, many times. It's trying to get to the Gulf the fastest way possible. It may choose the Atchafalaya this time, and make the decision stick.
Just curious, where do you get your news?
Why?
Thanks. You indicated you hadn’t heard much about the flood in the news and I wondered what news source(s) weren’t covering it.
I've been torturing myself this way for years.
You are a much heartier soul than I.
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