A handy overview of the flooding and water flow.

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011..._medium=twitter

Mother Nature bats last....

Thank you for posting that very interesting article!

WA news doesn't recognize that anything exists east of Spokane or south of Portland, so we don't get much info on down there.

"...the decision of the Army Corps of Engineers to tame the Mississippi River once and for all." *snort!* Yeah, sure.

All they seem to need in that area now is a major shake of the New Madrid fault. Maybe a huge crevice could open a take some of that water...

Sue

Interesting link regarding the flooding in the Memphis area:

http://www.staysafeshelby.us/

The level of preparedness and civic response seems really good, so far. The next 2-3 days will really tell.


From the City Mayor:
"Hundreds of people have assisted our emergency responders during this critical time. I appreciate their willingness to fill sandbags, work at shelters, prepare food and keep our information hotline staffed at the emergency operations center."

In some ways I see humankind as being like a kid playing on the seashore. We find out we can direct a bit of the water by piling up sand and digging little ditches with our hands. We are immensely happy and confident and imagine ourselves the master of all the waters of the earth. We overlook the waves that are inevitably going to wash aside our sand castles.

We keep learning more and have recently, in the last fifty years, finally sussed out that just perhaps the Mississippi river watershed is slightly more powerful and complicated than what can be controlled for long with sandcastles built with plastic pails and toy shovels. Even giant hydraulic ones.

I suspect that increasingly we are going to figure out that the best way to deal with a wandering and rampant river is to simply stay out of its way. Farm all you want on the flood plain but limit construction to buildings on barges, tall piles, and structures we can afford to lose.

COOL! Acres of farmland with a tethered houseboat in the middle!

Isn't that a visual?!

Sue

If everyone in the flood are lived on a barge, or some sort of well adapted floating house, and the warning comes there would be nothing to do but make sure the kids and livestock are on board, check the anchor chain to make sure it will run free, and raise the gang plank.

When the water recedes you re-level the house and get to farming. In Egypt the Nile would flood every year. And every year the farmers would move short term to higher ground or onto boats. When the Nile returned to its banks rich silt, the source of agricultural richness, was left behind.

One of the reasons Egyptians got good at math and geometry was because the boundaries of the fields had to be surveyed and reestablished every year based on landmarks miles away.