Come and get it?

[xairbusdriver]

Wish there was a way to help get most of this to the Left Coast. It's all headed to the Gulf of Mexico, which is already full, as far as I know. At least some of this sediment may help restore the land lost in Louisiana.

(Sorry for the excessive width) This is the main channel of a floodway built after the 1927 Mississippi River flood. It diverts water from a nearby river that would be flooding were it not for this by-pass. There are huge siphons upstream of this location that get the water out of that relatively minor river (St. Francis, NE AR).

The shot below shows the top of a ladder that leads down to a platform where some very brave or extremely intelligence challenged inspectors can get a better view of the bridge structure. I chose not to even inspect the ladder, much less the bridge. The water is at least 30 feet deep, likely even 45. Since the next sight of 'civilization' would probably be about 50 miles and the water is likely well below normal body temp, I decided I might not survive the 'trip'. OTOH, the flow here is at least 10 knots, so the trip might be fairly fast, but I would certainly arrive after dark. With my luck, no one would be watching the river as I passed by...


These images are from over about a week ago. Forecast is for rain for the next several days! Even had a thunderstorm very early this morning, which is exactly what we don't need. A slow, gentle rain can be 'exported' much easier than a large, localized downpour!

Edouard, "Come on down!" And bring lots of buckets! My younger son works in Cupertino, I'm sending some of this back with him, but I'm not sure they'll let him put the buckets in the overheads...

[Bull Winkus]

Are you referring to these siphons at Marked Tree, Arkansas?



Here's the story on that, if anyone's interested.

And here's another oddity in the river systems of East Arkansas, where two rivers cross at right angles, called (what else?) Rivervale, Arkansas.

http://www.democrattribune.com/story/1569297.html

[elagache]

Dear X-Air, Herb, and WeatherCat drought watchers,

Thanks Herb for the interesting bits of river engineering.  Both examples are remarkable!

Alas moving water over the Rocky mountains doesn't look like the solution for the western droughts.  Even trying to move water south from Washington state finally was seen as the folly that it was.

We had our first example of an "atmospheric river" storm over the past day and a 1/2.  That dropped 2.88" of rain and for the first time put us in the above normal for a month column.  The rest of the month is still forecast to be wet but with cool storms that won't provide much rain.  Although these colder storms are contributing to a healthy snowpack for this time of year.

Sure doesn't look like an El Ni?o weather pattern yet.  However, it is not expected to kick in until January.  So we'll see!

Cheers, Edouard

[xairbusdriver]

Are you referring to these siphons at Marked Tree, Arkansas?

Yep! Only ones I know of! Embarrassingly, I've driven across this floodway for almost monthly for over half a century but never visited them! Of course, I've lived in the Memphis area for over 40 years and still haven't visited Graceland! I just don't want to "peak" too early... 

That part of Arkansas was very flood prone before the Corp started all this work. If you check the map, you'll see that the area is a maze of ditches and "rivers". In fact, were it not for the siphons, the Little Red, the "Buffalo" (now not much more than a ditch, would all end up in the St. Francis River. That may have been part of the reason for keeping the "Buffalo" out of the Little Red. You'll also see that these two "rivers" run parallel to each other for quite some distance before merging, one way or another, into the St. Francis or its floodway! It's all downhill from there!