Deep thoughts

"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck) 06/30/2019 at 23:59 • Filed to: None

5

5

This is a great visual for how deep the Mississippi has been running since January. What you’re looking at is the Port Allen lock, located just south of the I-10 Mississppi River Bridge on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

That dark line approximates the water height on the Mississippi since January . For those who have never seen a lock and don’t know how it works, here’s a simple explanation :

The dark line is from the lock being filled to the river level shortly before I took the pictures. How high is it? Well, the stream gage on the lock side is at about 4 feet above sea level (the water depth should be around 10 to 12 feet).

The water elevation on the river side is about 40 feet. That means the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge is running about 35 feet higher than normal.

It’s hard to imagine how much water is flowing through Baton Rouge right now. The river is flowing at 1.28 million cubic feet per second. One cubic foot of water is roughly 7.48 gallons. That translates up to 9, 575, 065 gallons of water flowing past the stream gage every second.

That’s enough to fill 14.5 olympic-sized swimming pools every second.

Normally, the water level is around 4 feet elevation at the lock. Don’t get confused - the river is still around 50 feet deep in the middle of the channel. Under normal conditions, it’ s flowing around 600k cubic feet per second, or roughly half what it’s flowing right now.

I’ve lived in Baton Rouge for nearly 12 years now. I still have a hard time grasping how much water is flowing down that river. It’s amazing.

RacinBob > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/01/2019 at 00:40

0

So basically the lock has been flooded and the grass covered since January. It’s kind of the same story here 8 00 miles north in Wisconsin. A continuous flood since April, just now under flood stage. The weird thing is it did not see to be that wet of a winter/spring....

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/01/2019 at 01:17

1

For the metrically inclined, imagine watching a box that is 6 metres wide, 6 metres high and 1 kilometre long, flash by every second...



TheRealBicycleBuck > RacinBob 07/01/2019 at 06:39

1

Yeah, basically. If the levees weren’t there, the river would be four to five miles wide. North of Baton Rouge, the levees are two miles apart and the water is still very close to the top. This aerial image is on the east bank of the river, not far from the Port Allen lock. It was taken a couple of months ago. The barges are moored at the normal bank. 

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > TheRealBicycleBuck 07/01/2019 at 07:53

1

And yet Cali and other parts of the west are still running out of water. We keep digging up land to put oil and gas pipelines, but nobody seems to care about doing it with water. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind 07/01/2019 at 08:44

0

To be fair, they have put a lot of money into moving water west.

When water prices reach $50 a barrel, they might start running pipelines.

The biggest problem is water treatment. A lot of the water in the U.S. come s from groundwater sources because it requires little or no treatment. While there’s a lot of fresh water coming down the Mississippi, it would require extensive treatment to remove particulates, chemicals, and biological contamination. Even farmers in the river’s flood plain use groundwater instead of trying to use water from the river.