Unusually heavy rainfall and severe storms in parts of Missouri and Illinois late last month are now causing the Mississippi River to surge, threatening a number of communities with severe flooding.
Combining cross-disciplinary skills from a diverse array of sports ā water skiing, basketball and butterfly catching ā skarping doesnāt just look like a lot of fun, it helps the environment too. The asian carp is an invasive species injuring boatmen across the midwest.
Kayaking the entire 2,552-mile length of the Mississippi River has been a challenge. It would be for anyone, but for novice paddlers like me and the now heavily-bearded boyfriend, it amounted to the biggest challenge weāve ever faced. Hereās why.
My boyfriend and I are paddling all 2,552 miles of the Mississippi River in a pair of kayaks. And the near-constant rain is creating some serious flooding. That makes the paddling difficult and dangerous, sure, but thereās other hazards too.
Alex Woodford is a 22-year old lady from England. Last year, while the two of us were camping with Bear Grylls, she told me she wanted to kayak the Mississippi from its headwaters in Minnesota all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. And now sheās doing it. ā Ed.
Scientists have verified that the rate of freshwater being released into the Gulf of Alaska is approximately 1.5 times the amount being dumped by the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico each year. Disturbingly, half of this water is coming from the melting of glaciers and snow.
Feast your eyes on this stunning map of the Lower Mississippi's evolving floodplains, lifted from cartographer Harold Fisk's 1944 report, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.
In 1936, after nearly two decades of devastating floods in the Mississippi River Basin, Congress passed the Flood Control Act, which funneled over $300 million into dams and other projects that engineers hoped would prevent millions from losing their homes in the next flood. But even this dramatic injection of cashā¦
The opening of the Panama Canal was a disaster for Midwestern farmers. So, in 1930 the US government set about deepening the Mississippi River to improve its cargo traffic capabilities. 79 years later, one dredger is still on the job.
As the Mississippi rises and sweeps away whatever it wants, photos from the ground are awful enough. But seeing NASA's satellite view, the damage is incredible. Blue-ish areas? Flooded. That. Is. A. Lot. Of. Water. [NASA via Boing Boing]
Devastating flooding along the Mississippi River have left large swaths the delta states in drenched ruined. General DeWitt Spain Airport, right outside Memphis, is clearly in rough shapeāas seen by this barely-visible airplane tip.
A team of architecture firms has released the first sketches of plans to rebuild the New Orleans waterfront. (Final plans will be announced in February.) They include developing trails and buildings a four mile stretch along the Mississippi River, giving people more access to the water and views of its serpentineā¦
