2011 Mississippi River Spring Floods

[NewsCopy]

BATON ROUGE, La. – Barges broke free from a towboat and the swift Mississippi River current carried them into a bridge as America's busiest inland waterway became even more challenging to traverse. The Coast Guard shut down a 5-mile stretch of the river ...

The rest of the story

[CajunRed]

Kyle...you've had some off the wall predictions over the years...your calls and posts can drive me nuts at times...and (well...you get my point). BUT...on this point of the 2011 flood and what will happen...including how and why...I have to give it to you.

SO FAR, you are correct, sir. For the sake of all those who are directly impacted by this, may you continue to be correct.

igeaux.mobi

[Bandwagon King]

_ Kyle...you've had some off the wall predictions over the years...your calls and posts can drive me nuts at times...and (well...you get my point). BUT...on this point of the 2011 flood and what will happen...including how and why...I have to give it to you.

SO FAR, you are correct, sir. For the sake of all those who are directly impacted by this, may you continue to be correct.

igeaux.mobi _

I appreciate your acknowledgement Cajunred. I also want to thank Big Ed & Mr. Helmut & even some of those whom I may have argued with aliitle bit during this thread. I have great respect for the people who had a part in designing this system & the people who maintain it just like any other person that's out on the front lines & trenches protecting the public safety & property many times with no recognition of the great work they do.

I respect the math & the science that goes into figuring & forecasting flood probabilities & those who are in potentially affected areas would always do well to follow the advice of these people when planning for these types of potentially life changing events.

I also understand the science of flow charts. As I said before, I read them everyday & just because this is a river & not an oil or gas well does not change the characteristics much. As a matter of fact it makes them eerily similar. Water is a fluid just like drilling mud, completion fluid, oil & even natural gas. As such it has specific characteristics which make it behave a certain way.

Charts are the primary indicators of the behavior of any body of fluid & as such DO NOT LIE. I mentioned this before in an earlier post, but many times my safety & the safety of the people who work for me & the ability to control wells depends on the ability to read these flow charts & understand what they are saying. Had the people in charge of the Macondo project understood that those flow charts are the law, because they DO NOT LIE, they would most likely all be alive today.

[NewsCopy]

The couple moved here last summer for a change of pace from their native Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 some ... McInnis, 37, was living in Sulphur, in southwest Louisiana, when Hurricane Rita wiped out her home in 2005. In some ways, she said, the ...

The rest of the story

[NewsCopy]

The final wave of holdouts has mostly packed up and left this Louisiana town as water from the swollen Atchafalaya ... The couple moved here last summer for a change of pace from their native Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 some 60 miles west of Baton ...

The rest of the story

[Bandwagon King]

_ _

It looks like there is more good news ahead. The river levels are starting to break over pretty good & should start dropping more quickly tomorrow & into Monday. The lower the levels get the more quickly they should drop. This is my own take & is not associated with anyone else, but I do believe they will be able to start closing bays on the Morganza pretty soon. Possibly as early as Thursday? They may wait until the river at Baton Rouge gets below a certain level, but Baton Rouge is definitely out of the woods for flooding & this should dictate that no more bays have to be open. They may have some kind of rule of thumb for how many close & how fast, but if the Corps handles the closing like they did the opening, they could likely use the reverse order they had for the openings I imagine.

Let's pray that the upper Mississippi valley doesn't get a whole bunch of rain in the next week.

[Turbine]

The south wind of the last couple days has canals south of Abbeville full to the brim, with flooding in some low lying cattle pastures.

With all the extra water in the gulf I wonder how long it takes to dissipate. If it takes days for the water to get from the locks to Morgan City, it must take weeks and weeks to get out of the Gulf.

I hope we get a late hurricane season, I could see an early hurricane creating a serious storm surge pushing all that water back on land.

[Bandwagon King]

_ The south wind of the last couple days has canals south of Abbeville full to the brim, with flooding in some low lying cattle pastures.

With all the extra water in the gulf I wonder how long it takes to dissipate. If it takes days for the water to get from the locks to Morgan City, it must take weeks and weeks to get out of the Gulf.

I hope we get a late hurricane season, I could see an early hurricane creating a serious storm surge pushing all that water back on land. _

Once again, IMO, we won't be getting a major storm this year. With the amount of cold water coming down these rivers from the north that should cool the GOM surface water sufficiently to not feed any major storms. If history is any kind of indicator, we had Camille in 69' then the 73' flood, then no major storms for a long time. We had Katrina in 05', this flood in 11' hopefully we don't have a major storm for a while.

[NewsCopy]

Their pier already was underwater. The couple moved here last summer for a change of pace from their native Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 some 60 miles west of Baton Rouge. The Bacquets savored their final hours before evacuating by lounging on the ...

The rest of the story

[NewsCopy]

The final wave of holdouts has mostly packed up and left this Louisiana town as water from the swollen Atchafalaya ... The couple moved here last summer for a change of pace from their native Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 some 60 miles west of Baton ...

The rest of the story

[NewsCopy]

We picked up the name "Cajuns" and settled along the rivers, bayous and marshes that provided us a living. We understood and tolerated the high waters and winds, and occasionally, voluntarily, moved away for a short period of time until the wind and waters ...

The rest of the story

[Chop]

You dont need a major storm to cause major problems with storm surge under current conditions.

You dont even need a C 1 hurricane.

A decent tropical storm could cause problems if we get one in the early part of July.
I think by late July everything will be close to normal concerning storm surge.


Dont think conditions exist for anything more then a Cat 2 for the next several years.
Hurricane severity runs in cycles. We have finally hit the quite cycle for about the next 30 years.
Cat 4 and 5 will be rare if ever for many years.