Mississippi River flooding question 2 Zero

[20ducks]

With the horrific flooding going on in the Midwest, all that water will eventually get down to your area (Louisiana). How will this effect your work etc., since you work with river traffic and so on. Perhaps a little about what you do would help. Enlighten me please.

 

[2 Zero]

It will all come down the river to New Orleans, as it all does. But the river in Iowa is only about 1/3 the size that it is in N.O. Most of our water normally comes from the Ohio river and since the spring rise is mostly over this won't be a problem for us.

Normally in New Orleans in the summer the river is about 2 feet above sea level. this spring it went higher than it has in 10 years which was about 18 feet. Our levees can handle 23 so we still had a lot of room. today it is about 10.5 and rising. So in about 5 or 6 days when the Iowa water gets to NO it may give us a rise to 15 or 16. Which will increase the current from 2 to 5 or 6 MPH. That is what makes my job more difficult. At about 3 MPH crazy things start happening to the way boats and ships handle and they get worse exponencally from there. You need to realize that boat doesn't have any steering unless water is going pass the rudder. So with a 5 MPH current if the ship is going past the land at 5 MPH you have no steering because there isn't any water moving past the rudder and if you want to stop by the land you need to go 5 MPH astern. Which becomes a problem because the rudder is behind the propeller so you don't get any steering in reverse. So you can see why that would be a problem.


FYI the levees that failed during Katrina were not river levees. They were the protection levees from the lakes and bayous around the north side of New Orleans.