April’s Storms Were Relentless. But the Rainwater Is Finally Going Away.

In early April, a mortal rainfall is based on floods in the west, since the days of severe storms devastated much of the central part of the United States. A few months later, the Mississippi River in New Orleans was finally destroying this week, since much of the water of those storms is finishing its long trip to the south.

The river has been gradually increasing for weeks and reached 16.7 feet in Thorsday. This is just below the 17 -foot flooding stage, and far from a record, but it is the highest level of water in New Orleans since 2020, and arrives in the middle of a four -year drought in the Mississippi river basin.

“It seems like a notice of different from the one that was only one year ago,” said Robert Florence, co -owner or historical tours of Nola, who directed a tour of the river a week ago. “When the water is high, it accentuates the sinks, the crossed currents, the swirls and the swirls. It feels more alive and powerful.”

The Mississippi basin is the third largest in the world.

The Mississippi river is complex and huge. Its main voice flows to 2,350 miles from the header in the Itasca Lake in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, playing 10 states and extending to many more with its tributaries.

The water that goes down the river and arrives in New Orleans is the result of the rain and the thaw that has occurred in states as far as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado and Tesseee.

In the case of the water that pushes in New Orleans at this time, it begins as rain falling four weeks ago, mainly on the valleys of the Mississippi River and the Ohio River. Between April 2 and 6, he turned the roads into rivers and flooded communities in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Some places recorded more than 15 inches of rain.

The rain was part of an extensive storm system through the country that also generated storms and tornadoes, although most of the damage came from the relentless rain, fueled by the moisture of the Gulf.

Little rivers in the upper basin quickly rose, some ridges at the historical level, and have already fallen again. The flood cycle is longer in the Mississippi channeled and with Diles, which is fed by numerous tributaries.

The rain at the beginning of April became runoff and flowed for days, to the upper part of the Mississippi lower river basin and its tributaries, including the arkansas, the white and red rivers, and especially the Ohio. You can take weeks to discharge from Mississippi’s tributaries to Peak, and that water travels through the river.

“This is the situation we are seeing now, where heavy rains fell in Kentucky in early April and will spend approximately four weeks before the Dencarge peak arrives in New Orleans,” said Kory Konsoer, associate director of the center for the center of the center.

As all that water traveled south, the river swelled along with it, causing additional floods in some areas and exceeding recently planted roads and cultivation lands. About 250 miles north of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Miss., He saw the great stage of flooding of the great flood of the river earlier this week, and then holding there for several days.

The river has been guarded closely for weeks.

It was well known that the river would reach its maximum point in New Orleans this week. The National Meteorological Service provides forecasts, and the US Army Engineers. UU. Up close to the thesis closely, since it administers the levers plumbing system, floods and deposits built of the river, they built large flood disasters.

Occasionally, the body of the army will open the discharges and floods that are designed to divert extreme meteorological events of flood waters. Any has opened from the storms in April, but approached.

This week, the agency conducted tests at Bonnet Carre Spillway, 30 miles northwest of New Orleans, to ensure that it was ready, if necessary, to avoid flooding. The landfill opens when the river flows to the Gulf at a speed of 1.25 million cubic feet per second. But Matt Roe, a body spokesman in the New Orleans district, said that the flow was expected to be only that level.

“This whole event has been very close,” Roe said. “In the previous forecast, it was predicted that we were going beyond that activation point, but the conditions seem to be a little lower.”

The landfill was built in 1931 to eliminate pressure on the levers that protect New Orleans by diverting up to 250,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second in the brackish waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Since then, the leg is used 15 times, five of them between 2016 and 2020.

“It is not the greatest amount of water that has moved in the last decade, but it is still a lot of water,” Roe said.