Watch a floodThese two satellite images were taken about two weeks apart, one in late December and o

Watch a floodThese two satellite images were taken about two weeks apart, one in late December and one on January 2nd. In that two week time period, an unusual series of winter rainstorms dumped large amounts of water throughout the Mississippi River Basin, leading to an extremely unusual mid-winter flood.Some portions of the river are breaking records for their all time high water levels. This flood is, in places, already rivaling the size of the 1993 flood on the Mississippi; that flood was considered at the time to be up to a “300 year flood” based on the height of the flood along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. That flood is estimated to have killed 50 people and led to $15 billion in monetary losses; so far this flood is estimated to have killed at least 31 people.The high water in this area has passed St. Louis and other communities in Missouri; it will now move down the Mississippi towards the Gulf of Mexico causing flooding at other cities like Memphis and New Orleans. The size of this flood is such that the US is reportedly preparing to use flood control systems in the Mississippi River Delta, which can involve flooding parts of the delta in order to keep the water out of major cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans.Over at our blog you can see video of the floods (http://tmblr.co/Zyv2Js1-CpKNm) and of record river crest at Cape Girardeau, MO, where the river was held in place by a well-engineered floodwall (http://tmblr.co/Zyv2Js1-D98wK).-JBBImage source:NASA/Aqua Satellite/MODIS instrumenthttp://bit.ly/1OFePnPReferences:http://1.usa.gov/1RjqZDPhttp://wapo.st/1VzU0tqhttp://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/20382 -- source link

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