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The U.S. Appeals Court in St. Louis on Saturday denied a request by Missouri's attorney general for an injunction to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from opening up an emergency floodway to ease near-record flooding on the Mississippi River. On Friday, a U.S. district court had rejected the state's motion for a temporary restraining order against the move, which would send a quarter of the Mississippi's flow coursing over 130,000 acres of prime farmland and homes of some 200 people. Major Gen. Michael Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission and a top officer with the Corps, has said he can't be sure whether he will activate the floodway to reduce pressure on levees and protect surrounding towns amid expected record flooding at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Earlier this week, he ordered the Corps to bring barges with explosives and other materials to the area from Memphis, Tenn. On Saturday, Gen. Walsh ordered the barges to be moved from Hickman, Ky., to Wickliffe, Ky., where they will be directly across from Birds Point, Mo. If the general decides to go ahead with the plan, the Corps will set explosives to blow a two-mile-wide hole in the levee at the top of the floodway, which measures 35 miles long and up to 12 miles wide.
Originally posted by crazydaisy
Blowing up the levee on the Madrid sounds insane -
is there nothing else they can do? Highly concerned
as to what this may do as far as earthquakes are
concerned.
--.>But the part of the weather story which has been somewhat glossed over by the MSM is the decision by a federal judge on Friday to allow the US Army Corps of engineers to blow a levee on the Mississippi in order to try and alleviate flooding in the southern Illinois city of Cairo. (KAY-row if you're ever up there, not KIE-row, which is in Egypt.)
All of which has gotten the attention of the various alternative/to/conspiracy types because this would flood 130,000 acres of farmland.
The thinking goes that not only was the judge in this case (Steven Limbaugh, Jr.) a cousin of a prominent radio person, but the area is smack-dab in the midst of the New Madrid Seismic Zone as you can see in this USGS map:
Let's run some numbers, shall we?
An acre is 43,560 square feet.
And let's estimate that the average depth of the planned flooding will only be three feet, which means each flooded acre will contain 130,680 cubic feet of water. A cubic foot of water weighs 62.427 pounds, so the additional surface load might average, let's call it 8.1 million pounds.
Which we multiply times 130,000 acres to get 1,053.000.000,000 pounds of water being placed over New Madrid. And as quickly as gravity can move the water.
About the only thing missing would be a high pressure area, to further accentuate the impact. Oh, the barometer in Cairo, IL this morning was 29.91 and rising so kinda keep an ear open on when the levee is blown - a decision on timing (if at all) will be made by the Army Corps this weekend.