The Mississippi River Runs Low?

I was watching some videos on YouTube the other day and one of the people I follow posted a video about how low the Mississippi River has been running. Apparently some people have been getting concerned and posting pictures of the sand bars showing.

Other problems have been happening with an increase in the number of water mains breaking near the surrounding lands. As the river dries up it figures that the ground must be shifting around.

I haven’t heard much about it from other sources so I’m not sure if things are being reported correctly. It is sometimes difficult to verify facts with so much information out there.

Panic sets in

With all this talk about the quintessential waterway of the United States running low I began to feel a bit perturbed. After all the Mississippi has been pivotal in many of our songs and such a big part of our history.

What if my drinking water supply was running low? Jumping on my bike I rushed down to the local river to check on it (and take a picture for this blog). For some reason it turned into a bit of a Herculean task, LOL. Loud obnoxious cars streamed past and an enormous locomotive blasted its horn right next to me. When your in a car you don’t fully realize how loud those locomotive horns can get.

I got slightly confused and wound up getting turned around going the wrong way. I rode my bike through the broken glass in the alleyways trying to find a less traveled way to get back towards the river but I wound up traveling in a circle and fighting the cars anyway. I really wish the bike paths would go through to different parts of town or there were at least some decent other less traveled routes to get through on.

When I finally got there the water was showing the usual level for this time of year. This is really nice glacier run off water. You can see the mineral content in the river water color especially when you see it from farther up near the source. I think it is very healthy for you to drink and reminds me of the nice water that I drank when I was a youth.

When I was growing up we had clear clean water supplied by a glacier in the Rocky Mountains. This source has long ago dried up. When I was a boy the tops of all the peaks in the high mountains that I looked at were filled with glaciers and snow capped in the summer. It doesn’t look like that anymore, the heat, dry conditions and increase in population were reasons for our movement to where I live now.

Here’s a view from upriver I took a while back that shows off the minerals in the water. I’m so happy to have this as my drinking water now.

After riding back from my mission to check on the river I was peddling slowly uphill when suddenly a group of grade school boys came careening quickly downhill. Riding four abreast on the sidewalk with no adult supervision around they were and odd sight. They had on matching orange “look at me and please don’t run me over” vests with reflective colors and a white cross on the front.

I usually try to ride slow if I’m on the sidewalk, a lot of places have laws against riding your bike there. But around here it is really dangerous to ride on the street sometimes and with increasing traffic it can be difficult to get around by bike.

Trying my best to move over and stay out of their way I thought to myself, “Hey, you kids better ride a bit slower and watch out for the uphill traffic which has the right away you know.”

I figured if an impact happened I would come out ahead. After all I probably outweighed most of them by over two to one. I would be kind of like a collision between a Mac Truck and an Volkswagen Bug, lol. Still though, there would probably be some questions asked I would like to avoid that kind of trouble if possible.

I thought to myself, “This seems vaguely familiar I wonder where I’ve seen something like this before?” Then it occurred to me that it reminded me of the Revolutionary War battle reenactments I had seen with the Red coats streaming down at high speed.

“Have fun kids, and please try to keep the shinny side up and rubber side down,” I thought as they raced off.

So after all that I hope you enjoy my picture I took today of my drinking water river – it has been enhanced by Google Photos.

Why is the Mississippi running low?

With an increase in rainfall the vlogger did not think that it would follow that the river should be running so low. His theory in a later video was that perhaps some recent crack had opened up in the ground from some earthquake and the water was draining into it.

It could be, but many rivers are running low all over the earth. If the water table was not drawn down too far even if a crack happened I’m not sure if there would be an issue with the water displacing into it.

From what I’ve heard, what we see as running in the river is just maybe ten percent of the total water that is moving in the ground. A river basin like the Mississippi has lots of factors like the groundwater and snowmelt that feed it.

Snowmelt sinks slowly into the ground and allows time for the water to get soaked up into the earth. Rain water can run off very quickly and cause short flooding without producing the sustained river flow that we are accustomed to.

Large patches of ground with little or no vegetation cause water to run off quickly and not soak into the ground. This is happening from farming practices, loss of vegetation through increased temperatures, and fire burned areas. (This has been one of the worst fire burn seasons that I can remember around here.)

Streets and parking lots replacing vegetation and trees causes more water to run off quickly down the river after a rain too.

Road construction in canyons that straighten out the flow of the river can cause more of it to quickly wash down stream during a flood and not soak slowly into the soil. Even the loss of carnivores like the wolf has shown to change the way river basins drain because snake rivers tend to form from herbivores picking better areas to graze away from the dangers of carnivores.

Cities, agriculture and industry all pull water out of the river and this use doesn’t naturally evaporate back into the local area. Even dams change the water flow and evaporation patterns.

All this effects the natural evaporation that would happen through plants and trees that would create micro climates like rainforest's where the water naturally cycles in an area over and over.

Water moves through the ground very slowly and by pulling it out and using it, the speed at which it moves downstream is changed. With less water going into the ground eventually at some point there is less water to use - we’ve been pumping massive amounts of waster out the ground for years.

The loss of glaciers that feed the river with water from melting snow and ice is a big factor too.

In short I think there are many factors that are causing rivers to run low. I’m not sure exactly what the major issue is with the Mississippi right now but the Colorado has been running low for years. Anyone care to give an opinion? This is all just from my limited understanding, please correct things if they don’t sound right.

Here’s a link to the video, it is not my work but worth taking a look at if your are interested.

What can we do to change things?

Planting some trees near all the rivers would be a really good start at improving things. I was so happy to see some of the new trees that were planted along the bike path.

I think they were planted a bit close together - these Cedar trees can get pretty big around here. I guess folks don’t think about things 300 years in the future but it might be time to really think about things 30 years in the future at least.

Some apples and nut trees planted next to the river would be really nice too. We should think about moving to a diet that is based more on things produced by trees imho. If nothing else the fruit would fall to the ground and ferment giving some of the local fauna some good times.

Trees are so good for the soil and environment, they lock up carbon from the air and move it into the soil and help keep the water around for our use.

Healthy soil retains moisture and leads to healthy river flow. Land management by letting prime areas go back to a more natural condition is really needed. Parks and bike paths through a more natural landscape near rivers would be a big plus for our communities and help out water flow and issues around flooding. Some more interesting information about soil issues was posted today on a Bloomberg article.

I’m sure there are many other things that can help as well, like moving more away from just profit motivation in our approach to these issues. Planting trees and setting aside undeveloped public land takes money and a firm commitment to allocate resources in this direction.

I’m certainly no authority on these issues so please chime in. What do you think?

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Thanks for reading! I always value your support! Pictures were taken by my Galaxy S7.