At the beginning of April a deadly stream of rains caused flooding over the midwest, because days of serious storms destroyed a large part of the central part of the United States. A month later, the Mississippi River in New Orleans finally tuft This week the water of those storms ends its long journey to the south.
The river gradually has been rising for weeks and reached 16.7 feet on Thursday. This is just below the flooding phase of 17 feet and far from a record, but it is the highest water level in New Orleans since 2020, and is surrounded by A four -year drought In the Mississippi River Basin.
“It looks noticeably different from it than it was just a year ago,” said Robert Florence, a co-owner of Nola Historic ToursWho led a tour on the river a week ago. “When the water is higher, it accentuates the zinc holes, cross flows, whirlpools and vertebrae. It feels more lively and more powerful.”
Mississippi basin is the third largest in the world.
The Mississippi River is complex and huge. The most important stem flows at 2,350 miles from the upper reach in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, touches 10 states and spreads in much more with its tributaries.
The water that comes along the river and arrives in New Orleans is the result of rain and snow melt that has occurred in states as far away as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado and Tennessee.
In the case of the water that now pushed in New Orleans, it started as a falling rain four weeks ago, mainly over the Upper Mississippi River and the river Ohio River. Between 2 and 6 April, the Changed roads in rivers and flooded communities In Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Some locations registered more than 15 centimeters of rainfall.
The rain was part of a vast cross -country system system that also generated thunderstorms and tornadoes, although most of the damage resulted from the ruthless rainfall, fed by moisture from the Golf.
Small rivers in the upper river basin got up quickly, some cresting Historical levelsAnd have already returned. The flood cycle is longer on the channeled and advanced Mississippi, which is fed by numerous tributaries.
The rain changed in the drain at the beginning of April and flowed for days, in the upper part of the Lower Mississippi River Basin and his tributaries, including the Arkansas, white and red rivers, and especially the Ohio. It can take weeks for the discharge of the Mississippi to peak, and to eventually travel through the river.
“This is the situation we see now, where heavy rainfall fell in Kentucky at the beginning of April and it will take about four weeks for that peak drain to reach New Orleans,” said Kory Konsoer, associated director of the Center for River Studies at Louisiana State University.
While all that water traveled to the south, the river swelled, caused additional floods in some areas and caught roads and agricultural land that were recently planted. About 250 miles north of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Miss.Earlier this week, the river saw in the vicinity of a large flood phase and held there for a few days.
The river was closely monitored for weeks.
It was known that the river would peak in New Orleans this week. The National Weather Service offers predictions, and the US Army Corps of Engineers monitors it closely while it manages the sanitary system of dikes, floods and reservoirs of the river to prevent large flood disasters.
Occasionally the Army Corps will leave and open floods that are designed to distract flood water during extreme weather conditions. It has not been open since the storms in April, but it came close.
This week, the Bureau has performed tests on the hood of the hood, 30 miles northwest of New Orleans, to ensure that it was ready, if necessary, to prevent flooding. The spill is opened when the river flows in the Golf at a speed of 1.25 million cubic foot per second. But Matt Roe, a spokesperson for the Corps in the New Orleans district, said that the power was expected to be shy for that level.
“This whole event, it has been very close,” said Mr. Roe. “In the earlier prediction it was predicted that we will go beyond that trigger point, but the conditions seem to be slightly lower.”
The transfer was built in 1931 to remove the pressure on the dikes that protect New Orleans by leading up to 250,000 cubic foot of fresh water per second per second in the brackish waters of the Pontcharter of the Pontcharter. Since then it has been used 15 times, five of them between 2016 and 2020.
“It is not the most water that has been through the past decade, but it is still a lot of water,” said Mr. Roe.
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