The River

The past few years, we seem to have a year of drought followed by a year of floods. It's getting to be a fairly regular cycle. The 2011/2012 cycle has been really dramatic.

This (not the street, but the area beyond the street) is a picture of Mud Island River Park which is on a peninsula in the Mississippi River. It was taken in May of 2011 when, you may remember, there was flooding everywhere along the river. If you look right below the girder on the left, you can see a little island with tall flagpoles on it, and to the right of that a vague shape in the water.

This is a picture take from just about the same place last week. The sun was setting, so the flags are lost in the light, but you can see the pool where the odd shape was.

Here's a close up from May, 2011.

And the same area last week. Just to give you an idea of the size, and how deep the flood was, that little huddle of dark gray objects on the upper right of the pool is made up of fairly big buildings.

This is a close-up of the buildings. They are in the top right corner of the picture on the right. 

Of course, not the river has been at record lows. That break on the side of hill with the flags is about where the water line is when it's normal. I drove over a tributary of the Mississippi, the Coldwater River, the other day, and it just wasn't there. Except for one very small channel which was probably dredged out, it was completely dry. It's usually at least half a mile wide. I wish I had a picture, but I was driving on a busy expressway with no place to stop.

Lately, we've been getting a few storms, so maybe that will change soon. I hope so.

AMDG