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May 24, 2011 – Update

The Great Mississippi Flood Of 2011 appears to be getting worse as the rain keeps coming and those suffering in water tens of feeet above flood stage may waken with a new water rush from Arkansas as this person explains. Where does a foot of water go when the Mississippi is already having the largest flood in recorded history, quit simply, over all the levees.

The Mississippi River is about to receive another massive dose of water over the next few days… Northwest Arkansas/Southwest, Mo has gotten over a foot of rain in the past 2 days alone and it is expected to rain for the next 5 days.

Flash Flood Watch
Flood Warning
Hazardous Weather Outlook

Today: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 80. Breezy, with a south wind between 15 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Tonight: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly before 1am. Some of the storms could be severe. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 66. Breezy, with a south southeast wind between 15 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

Wednesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 80. Breezy, with a south southwest wind between 15 and 25 mph, with gusts as high as 35 mph. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Wednesday Night: A chance of showers, mainly after 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 56. West wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.

Thursday: A 20 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 66. West northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.

Every lake and river in Arkansas is connected to the Mississippi.

To make things worse, every single lake in Arkansas is man-made and they will most likely have to open the flood gates on some of our bigger lakes. Once this happens there will be nothing to stop the water from going directly into the Mississippi. Our soil is completely saturated and we cannot take on anymore water. Here are some pics of last months flood of the area. More here on Carroll County Flooding

Here is our Golden Gate Bridge on Table Rock Lake.
Before:

AFTER:

Both the James River and the Kings river flow into Table rock lake which flows out to the White River, which then flows into the Mississippi. As you can see in this link Table Rock lake will surpass it’s top flood level and will have to release water towards the Mississippi. This will be the 2nd time in 2 months that the Table Rock gates have been opened. Table Rock Lake and Openings of Gates to The Mississippi River. Click Here

Here are some pics of the flooding over the past 2 days. Click Here

This flood may push the Mississippi well beyond our control and if it does you can say goodbye to delta farmland that grows 70% of our rice and cotton…

This report comes from a Concerned Citizen in Arkansas by the name of TheJuiceIsLoose from the most popular conspiracy website in the world, Godlikeproductions.com

May 23, 2011 – Update

Flood waters intentionally redirected by the Army Corps of Engineers into Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin still have not reached a number of small towns there. Meanwhile, Vicksburg and other cities upriver in Mississippi reported signs that water levels were beginning to slowly ebb as the waters head south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Some Louisiana residents were allowed to return home today after being driven away by the threat of Mississippi River flooding, while others faced a new deadline for evacuating. Barge operators, meanwhile, awaited a decision on when the swollen river would be reopened at Baton Rouge.

The Coast Guard said it may allow some Mississippi River barge traffic to resume today after an accident closed a nine-mile stretch three days earlier.

Hundreds had left homes threatened by the opening of a key floodway that’s diverting water from the Mississippi to protect more heavily populated cities downriver. Today, the threat appeared to have diminished for some neighborhoods, while another community several miles to the south was still waiting to see how bad the flooding could get.

A mandatory evacuation order was lifted today for St. Landry Parish, including in the Krotz Springs and Melville areas. Parish President Don Menard said new forecasts indicate that there won’t be extensive damage from rising water. By contrast, residents to the south in the St. Martin Parish community of Butte LaRose were told they must be out of their homes by Tuesday at noon as floodwaters spread closer to buildings there. Most residents have been gone for days.

The Coast Guard is considering when to reopen the river at Baton Rouge as it reviews plans to remove three sunken barges. Petty Officer Stephen Lehmann said the Coast Guard expects to allow northbound barges to resume sometime today. Southbound barges would be allowed to travel down the river once the northbound backup is cleared.

The Riverwalk Casino in Vicksburg was one of the last gambling establishments operating on the Mississippi during these historic floods, and the management lined the drive with insistent signs. “Still open”, they said, “Still happy”. Another sign, an electric one, bragged about the new decor. Workers had stuck pink plastic flamingos on the 4ft sand wall. The river had swallowed up the lawn and trees and was lapping at the parking lot. But a few people were still placing bets inside.

After all, Americans have been taking their chances with the Mississippi for centuries.

It has been more than 250 years since European settlers began building earthen embankments, or levees, on the Mississippi. It has been more than 80 years since America established a flood control system on the river that was supposed to prevent future catastrophes. It has been 40 years since Congress moved to compel local authorities to relocate people from flood-prone areas, or protect them through insurance. And it has been more than 15 years since Bill Clinton ordered a White House study to determine what could be done to reduce flood damage.

So why has this year’s flooding of the Mississippi brought so much hardship to so many people?
After Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee, the swollen river is expected to reach its high water mark in southern Louisiana this week before emptying in the Gulf of Mexico.

The authorities say they are confident their preparations will keep New Orleans above water. But small communities in Louisiana will face their worst flooding over the next week, and the waters are likely to stay until mid-June.

Seen one way, the floods are an act of nature, beyond human control – and America got off relatively lightly. Despite extensive property damage, with predictions that more than a million acres of land would go underwater, only four deaths due to flooding have been recorded so far, in Arkansas and Mississippi. Industries, population centres and shipping in the Mississippi have been protected. Unlike in Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of flood control, has had no levee failures.

Looked at another way, the flooding was entirely predictable. Damage to homes and fields in the Mississippi’s way should have been avoidable. For all the effort over the years put into controlling the Mississippi, for many individuals – and even entire towns – there is only the illusion of safety.

John Scroggins, 79, thought he knew all there was to know about floods. He spent 32 years as a civilian technician in the Army Corps of Engineers fighting floods. When he moved to the Magnolia Road are of Vicksburg in 1960, he knew it was a flood-prone area, but thought the possibility was relatively remote.

His home, south of the city, is in what is known as a 100-year flood area. That does not mean it will flood only once every 100 years, but that there is a 1% chance of flooding each year.

That is more than it seems at first. A house in a 100-year flood area has a one in four chance of getting flooded in the life of a standard 30-year mortgage.

Scroggins decided that was an acceptable risk. He also believed he could outwit the Mississippi by building a foot higher than recorded flood levels. The extra foot would save him from having to buy flood insurance, he said, which he thought would be two or three times the cost of a homeowners’ policy.

“The flood has never, never been here before, even in 1927,” which is the worst flood on record, he said. “It was always down there in the weeds. This is the grand-daddy of all floods, right up there beside Noah’s. If it hadn’t been for that we would never have seen water here. It’s always been down yonder.”

Scroggins found himself paddling around to his next-door neighbour’s house in a flat-bottomed boat. His own property remains above water for now – but only because of a Herculean effort.

Scroggins brought in 23 truckloads of sand and built a 5ft wall around it. Now he and his wife are virtual prisoners. Most of the neighbours have left. Scroggins worries that his wife, Wanda, 77, will break a hip if she clambers over the barrier. And if his homemade levee breaks, it will all be a wasted effort.

More than $2 billion worth of residential properties face potential flood damage from the opening of the Morganza Spillway in Louisiana, according to a new study.

The effort to divert the swollen Mississippi River could flood 21,272 homes, inflicting damages of over $2.2 billion, says an analysis by financial research firm CoreLogic. These homes are in the path of deliberate flooding on the part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has opened 17 bays along the Morganza Spillway to flood rural areas with the intention of sparing the cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Tennessee has been issuing food stamps for victims of flooding in four West Tennessee counties that were declared disaster areas after the Mississippi River flooded out many areas, and devastated the normal life of shopping at the grocery store and working for wages.

Resources
Tennessee Department of Human Services website at www.tn.gov/humanserv

May 20, 2011 – Update

Cresting floodwaters exacted severe tolls on some airports, but spared many others along the Mississippi River as residents girded for action from Memphis, Tenn., into Mississippi and Louisiana on May 19/20th.

The Memphis-area airports mostly fared well, but an exception was General Dewitt Spain Airport at the river’s edge, flooded and closed until further notice. Two based aircraft sought refuge at unaffected William L. Whitehurst Airport in Bolivar, Tenn., said Jerry Haser, the Hardeman County Airport Committee chairman.

To the north of the major flooding, St. Louis Downtown Airport was “unaffected by the flood” despite its proximity to the river, said AOPA Airport Support Network (ASN) volunteer John Brendel. Just north of St. Louis, St. Charles County Smartt Airport “had water within 100 yards of the field but it never quite made it to the field. The access roads are on the other side, south of the field, and were not affected,” reported ASN volunteer Leo Lang.

“Yes, we had flooding,” said ASN volunteer Jeff Puckett of the Piggott, Ark., airport. “Ninety percent of the runway was covered in water for over 48 hours. The open front hangars and ramp were also flooded. No aircraft were damaged because of actions by owners to lift aircraft in the hangar and relocate the one aircraft on the ramp to a grass area above the water.”

South of Memphis, in the middle of the zone where waters were cresting late in the week, sits Byerley Airport, in Lake Providence, La., a single-runway strip just west of the river about 25 miles north of Vicksburg, Miss.

Lamar Perry answered the airport telephone early May 19.

“We’re open for business, for what it’s worth,” he said.

Perry expressed some relief that crest forecasts for the river had been lowered at Vicksburg, as reported in the Vicksburg Post. The river had already topped to the north at Greenville, Miss., about a foot lower than early forecasts.

Sill, said Perry, the river was “real high,” and it would be a slow fall—two or three weeks perhaps—and he wouldn’t be breathing easier until the river was below the 50-foot level.

Locals were warned that while the river has crested, it will remain above flood stage through mid-June, putting pressure on levees that could still breach.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” cautioned Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, head of the Army Corps of Engineers, Mississippi Valley Division.

He noted that crews were already having to reinforce a 250-foot-section of levee weakened by a slide.

The relief was also tempered by news that the river had claimed its first fatality there.

Walter Cook, 69, died overnight apparently due to drowning, the coroner stated.

Two firefighters on a boat patrol Wednesday had spotted Cook clinging to a fence in chest-deep water. By the time they reached him, Cook was floating in the water.

Moreover, dozens of Vicksburg families have seen their homes swamped, and lives disrupted.

In one of the city’s hardest-hit areas, mechanic Chris Lynn has paddled a small aluminum boat across his flooded property every day to mark the water line on his shop. Floodwater has crept close to his mobile home, though it has yet to go in.

As news flowed in from airports along the river about what the local media were now calling the Great Flood of 2011, a mixed picture emerged.

Very slowly, the high waters of the swollen Mississippi River are making their way south to Louisiana. Weeks of heavy rains and runoff from an unusually snowy winter have flooded thousands of homes and over 3 million acres of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The river is expected to crest at a record height of 58.5 feet sometime today in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 200 miles north of New Orleans. In order to spare larger cities and industrial areas downstream, the U.S, Army Corps of Engineers has opened floodgates in the Morganza Spillway, north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, allowing an estimated 100,000 cubic feet of river water to flow into the Atchafalaya Basin every second. Collected here are images of the Mississippi and those caught in its path over the past few days — coping, watching and waiting. [ See also: What We've Done to the Mississippi River: An Explainer by Alexis Madrigal. ] [40 photos]

As the flood-stricken area widened Wednesday across the US Deep South, the Mississippi River’s swollen waters claimed the life of a Vicksburg man.

Firefighters pulled 69-year-old Walter Cook from chest-deep floodwaters after he was seen clinging to a fence in downtown Vicksburg, Misssissippi. The river crested at 57.1 feet in the city Thursday. At least 2,000 residents were forced to evacuate to shelters.

Further south in Natchez, Mississippi, the National Weather Service (NWS) projects a crest of 62.5 feet on Saturday. The estimate is 6 inches lower than previous projections, but still 14.5 feet above flood stage for the city.

The crest will come lower but sooner because of the collapse of an old earthen levee at the upriver city of Greenville last Friday.

The river level will remain high for weeks, according to NWS hydrologist Marty Pope, putting strain on other floodwalls. “Residents who live along the river need to keep an eye out and be vigilant,” Pope told CNN Thursday. “We’re not going to fall to the kind of levels we got to during the large 2008 flood until early June, and won’t fall below flood stage until mid-to-late June.”

The state levee commission has been hastily reinforcing the backwater levees along the Yazoo River near its confluence with the Mississippi just outside of Vicksburg. Crews have been coating the levees with plastic to prevent the appearance of seepages, or sand boils, at the base of the walls.

Downriver, the US Army Corps of Engineers opened more bays on the Morganza Floodway, increasing the rate of water surging into Louisiana to 114,000 cubic feet per second.

South of the spillway, mandatory evacuations were announced for the weekend in the small Louisiana towns of Butte La Rose and surrounding communities. The St. Martin Parish sheriff’s office issued an order declaring that by 8 a.m. Saturday “the area will be secured and no one will be allowed to enter.” The town of Krotz Springs is expected to be inundated with 10 feet of water. Assumption Parish has canceled school for the remainder of the school year because of the disaster.

Across the bayou region, 25,000 residents are to be affected by flooding. Thousands will see their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

At least 4,800 people have already been rendered homeless in Mississippi, including 2,000 in Vicksburg. The state’s Emergency Management Agency estimates that by the time the crest reaches the Gulf of Mexico, over 6,000 Mississippians will be forced out of their homes.

These residents, who are among the poorest people in the US, now face weeks living in church-run shelters and bleak prospects of rebuilding.

Evacuees from the devastated town of Tunica, Mississippi, have been camping in the parking lot outside the Tunica Arena. County officials gave them until June 10 to move—well before the floodwaters are projected to recede. Even after the water is gone, residents will be confronted with debris, displaced wildlife, and toxic residue on their properties that will be costly to clean up.

resources

CNN, CBC, CTV, BBC, Aljazeera, Vicksburg Post, LA Times, MSNBC, WSWS.org,

May 19, 2011 Update

The Mississippi River reached its crest at Vicksburg on Thursday without breaching its main levee or inundating the city, but academic experts say the flood has raised troubling long-term questions about how the nation’s largest waterway is managed.

The river crested at 14.1 feet above flood stage in the Mississippi city, moving at 13 mph, more than double its normal velocity of 5 mph, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

It was carrying 17 million gallons of water per second, enough to fill the Rose Bowl in about five seconds.

The crest represented a new high-water mark since records began in 1827, though fortunately it was few inches below the expected peak, officials said.

Vicksburg is the last major city along the river before the water reaches spillways that can divert the flow down the Atchafalaya River and its adjoining swamp.

“It is good news … but today is not the day to declare victory,” said Col. Jeffrey R. Eckstein, commander of the corps’ Vicksburg District.

Eckstein said the river would remain at flood stage and out of its banks until mid-June, requiring close surveillance to ensure levees are not damaged and breached.

The flood claimed its first victim, Walter Cook, 69, who was found floating near downtown Vicksburg by the time firefighters reached him.

Climate and river experts say the 2011 flood is more evidence that mismanagement of the river has increased the risk of flooding.

Robert Criss, professor of Earth and planetary science at Washington University in St. Louis, said flood estimates by the corps had grossly minimized the danger and had resulted in urban development along the banks that had put more communities at risk.

At Hannibal, Mo., for example, the river has experienced a 70-year, a 200-year and a 500-year flood in the last 18 years, and 10-year floods in each of the last three years, all of which Criss said were statistically impossible.

“They don’t know what a 500-year flood is or a 10-year flood is or anything else,” Criss said. “There isn’t one chance in a thousand they are correct. We can’t imagine what the geologic world can dish up.”

The flood estimates are crucial because they are used to establish the cost of flood insurance. Underestimating flood risk results in lower insurance rates and encourages more urban development along the river’s floodplain, Criss said.

Nearly 15% of the nation’s refining capacity and hundreds of oil wells are at risk as the flood crest along the swollen Mississippi river makes its way into Louisiana over the next few days.

Flooded refineries would have the most impact on the nation’s oil infrastructure and, hence, could send gasoline prices higher.

Eleven refineries — producing over 1 million barrels of gasoline a day — lie in the flood water’s path, according to American Petroleum Institute Chief Economist John Felmy.

In total, the U.S. produces about 8 million barrels of gasoline a day.

Refiners are busy fortifying the facilities with earthen berms and other measures to protect the multi-billion dollar plants, and major damage is not expected.

But barge traffic, crucial in getting crude supplies in and gasoline out of the plants, might be impacted for up to several weeks. Engineers fear the wakes from large boats could cause water to overflow the levy banks, and have restricted barge traffic already.

If refinery operations are disrupted further, a spike in gas prices is possible.

“Will there be a major supply cut, we just don’t know yet,” said Felmy. “But 13% or 14% of refinery output, that’s significant.” MORE

May 17, 2011 – Update

For local resources and information please visit: www.getagameplan.org and www.emergency.Louisiana.gov

Gov. Bobby Jindal said parishes estimate that more than 3,000 people have been evacuated from the Morganza floodway area.

Fifteen of the 125 gates at the Morganza floodway are now opened, and high Mississippi River levels are expected in south Louisiana for up to three weeks, Jindal said.

As diverted water from the swollen Mississippi River flows through Louisiana’s Morganza spillway and into the Achafalaya basin on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of people in the southern state are losing their homes, businesses and crops.

As the flood waters pour into the woods, fields and small towns along the Achafalaya River, people and wildlife are pouring out of the region, seeking higher ground. Many towns closer to the source of the water, the Morganza spillway, are already evacuated. The spillway was partially opened by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to relieve the rush of flood water on the Mississippi River that could devastate the state capital of Baton Rouge and the historic port city of New Orleans farther downstream.

In La Fourche Parish, in southern Louisiana, local officials are counting on levees as high as one-and-a-half meters to hold back flood waters, but some rural areas and homes outside the system likely will be inundated.

Parish spokesman Brennan Matherne said people there are not happy about the coming flood, but that most of them accept the decision made by the Corps of Engineers to flood their region rather than the much more populated urban areas.

“I think there is definitely mixed feelings,” said Matherne. “I think most people who have settled here understood that they were building in a flood plain. I mean, we deal with disasters, unfortunately, almost on an annual basis – whether it be hurricanes, flooding or oil spills such as what happened last summer.”

But Matherne says people in his parish are accepting of the situation because they will most likely escape the worst of the flooding. They understand the need to sacrifice for the greater good of protecting much of the state’s economic assets and more populated cities. He says people in areas to the west, though, that are likely to have much higher water levels are not as forgiving.

“As you go westward from here to Morgan City, when you talk to people from that area, I think a lot of people are frustrated and do not understand why they have to flood to save New Orleans and Baton Rouge,” said Matherne.

Residents of other parts of the country sometimes wonder why anyone wants to live in the mostly swampy areas of southern Louisiana, where big storms and heavy rains are common, even when there are no hurricanes or floods to deal with.

Matherne said the Cajuns, who are of French descent and other people who have chosen to live here like the outdoor life of fishing and hunting, as well as the warmth and friendliness of their neighbors.

“People feel the benefits outweigh the risks,” he said. “This is the type of area where these people love living in. Certainly, they are resilient. People will always come back to rebuild here and live here because they understand what it means to live in a close-knit community. We feel we have a unique place and culture here.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, already is at work in the area that likely will suffer the worst of the flooding. But people who have been displaced are facing the loss of homes and other possessions that cannot be replaced easily. This is something that longtime weather watcher William Hooke finds troubling.

The flood waters that covered Louisiana filled the Tensas Basin when the levee broke in Pendleton, Arkansas on April 21st and flowedinto theAtchafalaya Basin. Then the river crevassed at Cabin Teele, Louisiana, just north of Vicksburg, on May 3rd. Following that the levee disintegrated along Bayou des Glaises in north Louisiana. Finally, the levee at Melville crevassed. The entire Deltaic Plain flooded. The waters covered a region from the west bank of the Mississippi River levee all of the way to the Prairie Terrace at Lafayette. Estimates of the flow rate are about 1.2 million cubic feet per second moving at nearly 30 mph along a 20 mile front.

At its maximum Morganza can release only 600,000 cubic per second and Bonnet Carrre’ about 250,000 cubic feet per second. That makes a total of 850,000 cubic feet per second…about 450,000 short of the 1.3 million cubic foot flow generated by the 1927 crevasses in Louisiana alone.

In which case, New Orleans may face the largest Mississippi River flood-stage in recorded historic times. It is essential, therefore, that everyone maintain vigilance. The crest will pass on May 23rd. However, high river water will be with us for weeks before and several weeks after that event. This will be the most supreme test of our levee system to date.

Be mindful, no one is expecting any problems to occur. But preparation is the best safeguard to prevent disaster. Plan for the worst and pray for the best. Likely, the New Orleans area will only experience a few weeks of stress and concern.