LOW WATER

I drove down onto the levee by the Mississippi to get a closer view of what's going on. During busier periods, particularly summer, the levee is used for parking. You can just see the faint yellow stripes on the cobblestones. It's not unusual to see the water getting close to the spaces painted at bottom center. If Old Man River is really rolling it can cover the paved path at left center or even go over the cement wall above that and over the street.

In an hour's shooting I saw one barge go by. My last office overlooked the river and a tow would pass in both directions every few minutes. As a commentator on FB noted yesterday, this is causing great difficultly for farmers who can't get their grain to port.               

Low Water On The Mississippi

Going, going... The water level on the Mississippi continues to fall. It's at the lowest level in the many years I've been here. It's hard to get a sense of it in one photo but think of it this way: that rough patch by the river in the foreground is the cobblestone levee. It's steeper than it appears. At normal levels, the water is half or two-thirds of the way up. I was standing on the street at the top of the levee and you can see that my POV is well above the top of the barge. In just a minor flood the street would be under water.

Barge traffic is a key element of the regional economy. It is down to one-way traffic in several areas south of St. Louis. If the water drops any further it will close altogether in the next few weeks. Then we'd really have trouble.    

Who Pulled The Drain Plug?

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I've never seen the water level in the Mississippi so low. It's down below the bottom of the cobblestone levee to the point that the rock breaks up and becomes the river bottom. This is the barge that helicopter tours depart from. The two gangplanks are usually way up the bricks.

Of course, we've seen the opposite. Maybe it's just the river breathing, in and out, in and out.