Mysterious loss of water from Mississippi River at New Madrid fault area

a reply to: Phage

My bad!
Yesterday I missed one question on the three question IQ test too!

Reading comprehension!
I guess that I should go back to observing quietly! Lol!

WOQ

I also live in Southern Illinois and noticed a week or so ago that the Ohio River, which flows into the Mississippi, was extremely low. Sand bars everywhere. And recently, we've had a couple noticeable quakes, one centering around Mt. Carmel, Illinois. Quakes always catch my attention after the 5.3 quake we had back on April 18th, 2008. My house has cracks in the walls from that one.

If it was low we would have known all ready. I dont think you guys realize how much river traffic there is and how if it dried up the efects on the economy would be obvious. 2/3 the nations coal supply comes through the tennessee river and into the mississippi, and roughly half the lumber. Not to mention grain corn and wheat.

a reply to: RickyD

Was there ground swell and a reversal of flow?

a reply to: RickyD

Seismo experts?

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Yeah? When did that ever happen? Outside a movie?

a reply to: RickyD

Are they low downstream outside of the draught area?

a reply to: RickyD

Why can't you?
And haven't two members already told you there's a drought in the region you're talking about?

a reply to: carewemust

There are volcanos and earthquakes under the ocean. If that much water doesn't stabilize things I doubt a drip from the Mississippi would.

earthquake.usgs.gov...

Quake today on the NM fault, felt as far away as Chicago!

What it means is beyond my expertise.

I`ll be busy today straightening pictures on my walls that the quake moved , and watching the webicorders.

a reply to: St Udio

Hundreds of years of irrigation?

First this isn't near new Madrid fault. Second they've been using this aquifer for irrigation for about sixty years or so. Not hundreds of years.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: RickyD
Yea after doing as much reading up on it as I could while at work it seems pretty clear that drought conditions are causing this. Also learned something new about the gauges on the Mississippi. When they installed them it was the river workers who did it so each one is different...and 0 is not the bottom. They instead made 0 the lowest anyone could remember at the time, so that's how you get negative numbers on them. Fun fact since you guys took the time to stop by. Sorry the doom porn was canceled lol!

Hey, always better to pay attention, and realize there isn't an issue, to not pay attention and be caught unawares when something big does happen!!

Interesting about the gauges, though! Never would have guessed that zero wouldn't be at the bottom!!!

originally posted by: Cheddarhead
I'm in Southern Wisconsin. There hasn't been any significant rainfall in the Midwest region since August, so now a good portion of this area is under drought conditions. All attention has been focused on the aftermath of Harvey, Irma & Maria, so the dry conditions are only recently being noticed by people outside the area. Normally, we do get some kind of precipitation after a hurricane maybe a week later, but this year we haven't received any kind of hurricane remnants.

There's always an chance that the New Madrid could be waking up, which I truly hope ins't the case. With the limestone composition in this part of the country, any activity along the faultline is going to be felt strongly miles away from the source.

I'm in northern Wisconsin where all of our rivers run into the St. Croix River which feeds into the Mississippi, and up here, all of our waters are very high because we've had a lot of rain in the past two years. We're soaked up here and our water is running down there, so it surprises me that your water levels would be so low with that in mind.