Monday, May 09, 2011

The Great Flood of 2011

The title of this blog post may seem a little dramatic, but this flood will be studied, written about, and taught in history classes for decades. It's one of the worst floods to hit the Midsouth, getting very close to the Great Flood of 1937. The impact can be seen from Space. These images were taken by the MODIS Rapid Response Team in conjunction with NASA. This first image is from May of LAST year, 2010. Click the image to enlarge. Try to find the Mississippi River, Black River, White River... How about the Cache River? St. Francis? That's a tougher task!
Now, let's look at the current situation. Can you find the Cache River now? Black, White, Mississippi Rivers are easy to spot! What bout the Mississippi River at Birds Point Levee? It is like the Midsouth's new Great Lake! Click this image to enlarge too...
This flood is massive, but will end soon. The rivers in many spot have crested and are falling slowly. The Mississippi River at Memphis should start falling this weekend, but it will be slow. Give it a month and we'll all want rain again, but for now... the sunshine is nice.

Personal Note: I may head over to Memphis this week to witness the flooding first hand. I'm not sure we'll ever see it this bad again. You never know.

Ryan

2 comments:

Brook said...

any idea on the specific date of the flooded image? or, was this the worst of it?

Ryan said...

That was the worst of it. Not sure about the date.