". . The nation’s mightiest, most mythic waterway has been strangled by months of dry conditions, which have sent water levels plummeting to historic lows. For weeks now, that slow-moving crisis has made it difficult, if not impossible, to move barges down a river that serves as a highway for about 60 percent of the nation’s foreign-bound corn and soybeans.
The result is a season of uncertainty for many up and down the river who depend on it for their livelihoods, from farmers growing crops to the tugboat pilots who steer barges toward the Gulf of Mexico and back. The deep worries over the crippled supply chain have mingled with the sheer curiosity of people who have flocked to the banks of the Mississippi to marvel at a sight few can ever recall.
Aerial images and meteorological data help to illustrate how dire the situation has become: Sandbars line a narrowing river channel, the result of scant precipitation and parched soils across the Missouri River Valley to the west and the Ohio River Basin to the east.
.In its outlook for the coming winter, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists said they expect drought conditions to worsen in the lower Mississippi Valley, with the climate pattern known as La Niña expected to bring dry conditions to the southern tier of the United States.
“Right now there’s no end in sight,” said Lisa Parker, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Valley Division of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Army Corps regularly dredges the river bottom to maintain a channel that is at least nine feet deep, enough to float towboats and the barges they push. The riverbanks are also dotted with structures that extend from the banks toward the center of the river, designed to send water flowing toward the channel and create currents that help maintain its depth.
The Corps has had five vessels out on the river in recent weeks to conduct emergency dredging, needed when barges get stuck and the channel becomes impassable, Parker said. Each time, the river channel is closed for at least 12 to 24 hours, further disrupting already slow barge traffic. .
Updated October 27, 2022 at 6:57 p.m. EDT|Published
October 26, 2022 at 3:59 p.m. EDT
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Dredge Jadwin, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging vessel, powers south down the Mississippi River on Oct. 19 past Commerce, Mo. (Jeff Roberson/AP)
The drought is “showing us the other extreme,” said Clint Willson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University and director of its Center for River Studies.
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“We’ve engineered it to promote this navigation and enable the commerce and the trade and reduce the risk for communities and ports. But at the end of the day, it’s still Mother Nature who is supplying the water.”
Daniel Wolfe contributed to this report. ESA Sentinel-2 imagery for Oct. 17 was used. Oct. 25 gage data was obtained via the U.S. Geological Survey. Soil moisture data was provided by Jonathan Case of ENSCO Inc. and the NASA SPoRT Center.
Posted: Oct 21, 2022
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