After a Disenchanting April, A Dismaying May

Highest Mississippi on record forces opening of the Morganza Spillway for the first time in 40 years.


Apart from more stormy weather, May has brought floods to several parts of the U.S., notably the Midwest and now the South, sweeping across farmland and into towns and cities.  Currently the Mississippi is "rising to heights never seen before" in Mississippi and Louisiana.  It is now testing the Old River Control Structure, probably the most important river control project most of us have never heard of.  If weeks of raging Mississippi water cause this structure to fail, it "would be a severe blow to America's economy, interrupting a huge portion of our imports and exports that ship along the Mississippi River," writes Dr. Jeff Masters. "Closure of the Mississippi to shipping would cost $295 million per day, said Gary LaGrange, executive director of the Port of New Orleans, during a news conference Thursday. The structure will receive its most severe test in its history in the coming two weeks, as the Mississippi River's greatest flood on record crests at a level never before seen."

Masters wrote on Saturday that the Structure should hold, but it will get an unprecedented test over several weeks. He added that "the Old River Control Structure is currently passing 624,000 cubic feet per second of water, which is 1% beyond what is intended in a maximum "Project Flood." The flow rate of the Mississippi at New Orleans is at 100% of the maximum Project Flood. These are dangerous flow rates, and makes it likely that the Army Corps will open the Morganza Spillway in the next few days to take pressure off of the Old River Control Structure and New Orleans levees. Neither can be allowed to fail."

But the ink was barely dry on that post before the Morganza Spillway was in fact opened:  "Water from the inflated Mississippi River gushed through a floodgate Saturday for the first time in nearly four decades and headed toward thousands of homes and farmland in the Cajun countryside, threatening to slowly submerge the land up to 25 feet deep.
As the gate was raised, the river poured out like a waterfall, at times spraying 6 feet into the air. Fish jumped or were hurled through the white froth and within 30 minutes, 100 acres of what was dry land was under about a foot of water."

Apart from easing pressure on the Old River Control Structure and the Spillway itself, this was to divert flood waters from Baton Rouge and New Orleans. "Shifting the water away from the cities is designed to ease the strain on levees and thwart flooding that could be worse than Hurricane Katrina."

The Mississippi is not the only river or body of water that is flooding towns and farmland.The May floods are partly a consequence of the heavy winter snows and the April storms upriver.   For different parts of the U.S., April had it all: record heat, record drought (resulting in record fires), record winds, record rains and snows.  Right now it's the rains and snows that are fueling this dismaying May.

The rest of the world have even worse consequences from severe and persistently severe climate, some of which we feel second hand in higher food prices as drought or severe weather damage and destroy crops.  The financial cost and human suffering of the storms, fires and now the floods in the U.S. may not lead the news yet, but they are adding up.  Even though at least one study finds that the U.S. has so far not really felt the obvious brunt of the Climate Crisis to the same extent as other parts of the world, we're getting a devastating taste, and a preview of possibilities to come, including infectious diseases and chronic debilitating health problems.     

Dr. Peter Gleick, climate and water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, put it this way last week: "All extreme weather events are now subject to human influence. We are loading the dice and painting higher numbers on them."

But nothing says it so succinctly as this observation from the extreme summer of 2010 which holds true for the extreme spring of 2011, from the reinsurer Munich Re: "The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change."