(Bloomberg) -- The threat of flooding is subsiding across thelower Mississippi River region just two weeks after high watersdevastated parts of the St. Louis area.
|The Mississippi probably won’t rise as high from Arkansas to NewOrleans as earlier forecasts projected, according to the NationalWeather Service.
|“Crest heights are going to be a bit less than what we werelooking at last week, which is good news,” said Jeffrey Graschel, ahydrologist at the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center, an armof the weather service, in Slidell, Louisiana. “The levee system isworking as it’s supposed to.”
|Heavy rains late last year across the Midwest created theregion’s worst flooding since 2011, deluging communities, forcingthe closing of pipelines, terminals and grain elevators and killingat least 30 people, according to state emergency officials inMissouri, Illinois and Oklahoma.
|The bulge of water has arrived in Arkansas City, Arkansas. Itwill probably crest in Baton Rouge on Jan. 18 at 43.5 feet (13meters), about 8.5 feet above flood stage but beneath the 47.3-footrecord set in 1927 and the 45 feet of 2011, according toGraschel.
|High-water advisory
|A high-water safety advisory remains in effect fromCaruthersville, Missouri, to Natchez, Mississippi, the Coast Guardsaid. The Bonnet Carre anchorage is closed on the Mississippi Rivernear New Orleans and the Port of Morgan City has closed Bayou Cheneto all marine traffic.
|On Sunday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the BonnetCarre Spillway near New Orleans for just the 11th time since1931, Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in AnnArbor, Michigan, said on his blog. The spillway can divert as muchas 250,000 cubic feet per second of water into Lake Pontchartrain,north of the city. Because of that, the river is already near itsprojected crest of 17 feet at New Orleans, Graschel said.
|While it probably won’t be necessary to open other spillways,that doesn’t mean communities along the lower Mississippi havenothing to worry about, Graschel said.
|“We do have high elevated waters right now, so rainfall willplay a huge role in determining any additional flooding we couldget in the future,” he said.
|Related: Officials weigh options as Mississippi floodwatershead south
|Check us out on Facebook and give us a Like!
|Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- All PropertyCasualty360.com news coverage, best practices, and in-depth analysis.
- Educational webcasts, resources from industry leaders, and informative newsletters.
- Other award-winning websites including BenefitsPRO.com and ThinkAdvisor.com.
Already have an account? Sign In
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
