A New Course

[bobpbx]

For the members like me who are interested in natural events.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tn_ScreenshotFromInteractiveMap.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morganza_Spillway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_River_Control_Structure

 

[dogg57]

Bob Are these natural? Not to much man has not broken.Not knocking your thread just makes me think that all these things are changing the world as we know it.Global warming has started biting us in the rear.Am I hiding under a rock, no.Thanks for sharing.

 

[bobpbx]

Essentially you are right, but I was thinking more of the flood itself as the natural event, and how it is trying to take it's natural course despite what man is doing.

 

[dogg57]

True

 

[manumuskin]

I know the Atchafalaya has been a runoff for the Mississippi in flood for sometime.I always thought it was a smaller stream but I drove over it back in 90 and it is a sizeable river,there was a barge being pushed down it by a tug as I went over it.It is definitely not some little backwater bayou as i thought.
Al

 

[MarkBNJ]

Yeah I was reading about this earlier today. The Morganza spillway is pretty impressive. You can see it in Google Earth just north of Morganza. 4000' feet long with over 120 gates, and has only been opened once, in 1973. You can also clearly see how the water will flow down the flood plain to the Atchafalaya. I wouldn't want to be those people, but they knew about this when they moved to the flood plain, and they still get a letter once a year from the corp reminding them that their properties are subject to inundation if the spillway has to be opened.

The ole miss has been wandering around that flood plain for millions of years, and it's just amazing to think we actually manage to keep it from doing that now... or at least so far.

 

[Ben Ruset]

Ol Man River, that Ol Man River. He must know somethin', but don't say nothin'.

 

[bobpbx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh9WayN7R-s

 

[Ben Ruset]

I saw Showboat on Broadway in '96.

 

[turtle]

They began opening the gates yesterday. It was on the news last night... the water will rise in the immediate area 2 feet in 24 hours.
Solemnly ceremonious in that they were opening the gates for the first time in so many years and as well as the fact that so many of the folk downstream just accept it as a fact of life that their homes/lives may be affected.

 

[Ben Ruset]

so many of the folk downstream just accept it as a fact of life that their homes/lives may be affected.

If this was NJ, they'd have moved there knowing that their houses may be flooded and, despite that, file a lawsuit to try to prevent them from opening up the gates.

 

[pinelandpaddler]

The river will have the final say every time.

 

[bobpbx]

The river will have the final say every time.

"Army Corps of Engineers geologist Fred Smith once stated, "The Mississippi wants to go west. 1973 was a forty-year flood. The big one lies out there somewhere—when the structures can't release all the floodwaters and the levee is going to have to give way. That is when the river's going to jump its banks and try to break through."

Source: http://poleshift.ning.com/profiles/blogs/2011-mississippi-river-floods

 

[MarkBNJ]

One of the most thought-provoking exercises for me, is to use GE or some other aerial imagery tool, and just scroll slowly along anywhere within the flood plain of a major river system, looking at the terrain artifacts. This is especially illuminating in the Mississippi river plain as you scroll north from New Orleans toward Memphis. Look at the near-kaleidoscopic proliferation of former channels and oxbow lakes. Now imagine it just like a rivulet of water running down a window, snaking back and forth. A river crossing a plain does the same thing, in glacial time. Really amazing. And of course all those former channels now have people living in them, or utilizing them.