Continuing to learn

Still working to learn about the Mississippi River and how we've attempted to control it - particularly in light of this spring's 100-year flood (the worst since 1973...um...).

This week's reading took me to Randal's blog and his post about his Michael Bay scenario...

I love Randal and the fact that he's fascinated with the same kind of stuff that I am. He went and posted a couple of marvelously revelatory diagrams - the first from The Mississippi River & Tributaries Project: designing the project flood which is clearly and awesome document that I'm going to have to read (it's only seven pages long, a solid start)...

The second was made by Randal and looks at just how close to capacity each of those routes was as of May 8th this spring...

Randal then bounced me along to Wunder Blog's post about the 100-year flood (did I mention there was one of those in 1973?) where they have listed that Old River Control is still flowing at 93% capacity which absolutely terrifies me. There's also Wunder Blog's post giving a whole bunch of background about  Old River Control System itself. If things go wrong there, we're going to have absolutely the most fascinating thing happening: the Mississippi River will carve a new path through the swamps.

I kind of hope I get to see that in my lifetime.

Seriously, read Control of Nature. It's outstanding and illuminating.

PS - Rising Tide seems to be outstanding, as well. I'm only about 100 pages in, but I'm impressed.