A flood here and a drought there may well become the new normal. I called my brother in CO yesterday. He was concerned that the drought in the West would dry up his well. Meanwhile, torrential rain and flash flood warnings flashed across my television screen in MN. That’s weather and not necessarily climate change, but there seems to be a lot of extremes.
A drought to flood swing plagued major shipping on the Mississippi River as well. On Jan. 1, at St. Louis, the Mississippi River water level read 4.57 feet below the gauge and in mid-April it had risen 45 feet in just 4 months to 39.4 feet above the gauge. During peak flooding several locks had to be temporarily closed.
The US Army Corps of Engineers needed 25 dredges to maintain the channel and re-open harbors during the droughts lowest point. Between May 2012 and February 28, 2013 the Corps and contract dredges moved more than 29 million cubic yards of sediment, that’s about 1,333,333 dump truck loads (67 billion pounds) or 92 Empire State Buildings. -
www.OurMississippi.Org