Evening star., 1927-04-23

Comparing the Mississippi River
Aood with Noahs, one of the principal
flood authorities of the United states
Weather Bureau cites the fact that.
nrecedinP Noah's high water, 1t had
trained 40 days and 40 nights. Wnlie,
this time. it has rained about SIX
months. The rain started last Fan
with the rivers already bank-fuH Oh
water.
The Mississippi River flood OF today
is the greatest one of record since the
white man has had any knowledge OF
America, and the worst is yet TO come
It will be two weeks yet (less POSSIBLY
one or two days) before the crest Will
reach New orleans, and in the mean
time very little can be done to prepare
against its ravages. The crisis Will
come 90 New Orleans May D. Inc
flooded river is now some 40 to 40 miles
wide. and hundreds of thousands or
people are homeless or in immediate
IT is possible for the Weather Bu-
reau to predict, four weeks in advance,
the hour when the crest of flood Will
arrive in New Orleans, or to forecast
seven or eight days ahead of its arrival
in Cairo, while it can be calculated
ahead only is to "a hours for Pltts-
burgh.
In the meanwhile, there passes
Cairo. ILL.,. 100000 cubic feet of wa
ter every second. A cubic foot weighs
10 pounds. The enormous weight
of that torrent cannot be sensed, but,
incidentally, the Weather Bureau is
authority for the statement that IN
the rain which fell last Thursday on
Washington Q.3 inches) there We're
165 tons of water per acre. which Is
equivalent to about 400 tons per city
block. Over 500, 900 tons of sediment
are piled on the delta below New Or
leans every year.
There is no other river in the world
which has been so thoroughly pro-
tected with levees as is the Missis-
sippi; from Cairo to its mouth it Is
practically a canal, flanked with So
foot levees, from / to miles apart.
Yet it has broken through at several
places and overrun surrounding
areas.
No better means of safeguarding Is
yet approved by engineers. The idea
of great reservoirs to conserve sur
plus water in time of floods, as are
now used in Ohio to prevent another
Dayton flood is impracticable in
connection with such an enormous
area of watersheds. extending from
the Appalachians to the Rockies and
from the Canadian boundary to the
Gulf of Mexico. No embankments are
strong enough to withstand such an
exceptional onslaught of water as
comes when all the tributaries at once
are booming deluges. Besides, such
reservoirs would now have to extend
over areas including great cities and
P0Cf n
calculable.
Time was when the Gulf of Mexico
extended farther north than the mouth
of the Ohio River, which then emptied
directly into the Gulf. In those days
the Missouri River and several others
which now feed the Mississippi flowed
northward into Hudson Bay or the
Arctic Ocean. Then came the ice
age, with IDS great ice sheet thousands
of feet thick. blanketing all of upper
North America, as far south as south
ern Ohio and southern Illinois. That
damned for centuries all northward
flowing rivers, and the Missouri found
it's new channel directly into the Gulf
of Mexico, near its present mouth,
north of ST. Louis.
Even when the ice melted and the
edge of the glacial cap receded north
ward, 1t left debris forever shutting off
old channels. Later smaller rivers like
the Red River of the North cut new
channels, back from Hudson Bay
through the debris, for rivers always
begin cutting at their mouths and
never at their sources. The great
Saskatchewan may have formed
floods with the melting SHOWS of the
Rockies, but the release must have ap-
preached from the sea, rather than
by the rivers cutting through from
the south northward.
y r.
With the change of course south |
ward by the Missouri and all other |
rivers now emptying into the Missis |
sippi, there came a great burden of |
sediment stolen from the eroding
Rockies, tbs. -plains and the Appala-
chians and 1kSeghe That sediment