If You Love Our Current Inflation Woes, You'll Love The Record Low Mississippi River Levels

The Mississippi River is so low that people can walk to 
this island in the river south of St. Louis, which is 
extremely rare. Normally, it's only accessible via boat.

 The following news actually surprised me this past week:

Large stretches of the Mississippi River are at record low levels. 

I knew that drought has afflicted swaths of the Mississippi River watershed this year, but I didn't think the droughts were the worst on record. They probably weren't, but the location of the droughts, the widespread areas affected by the droughts and their persistence really pushed the mighty Mississippi to a point that for now isn't so mighty anymore. 

The Mississippi River usually reaches its low point about this time annually, but this year the low is really low.

Says the Washington Post in an October 12 article: 

"Repeatedly over the past week, water levels have become too low for barges to float, requiring the corps to halt maritime traffic on the river and dredge channels deep enough even for barges carrying lighter than normal loads Days after a queue of stalled river traffic grew to more than 1,700 barges during emergency dredging near Vicksburg, Miss., a separate 24-hour dredging closure began Tuesday near Memphis. More dredging, which routinely costs billions of dollars a year, could be needed if barges continue to run aground."

This dredging has to continue to allow barges to pass, but still, things are way more gummed up than they ought to be, due to the low water.

This disrupts supply chains. As we've heard so much on the news lately, screwed up supply chains are one reason inflation is so nasty right now.  The low water on the Mississippi can only make this situation worse.

The river carries 60 percent of our corn and soybean exports, so you can see how this can affect food prices. Especially since agricultural exports from Ukraine are severely limited due to Russia's invasion and war crimes in that nation.  

At Memphis, the water level hit minus 10.79 feet, breaking a low water record established in 1988, another big drought year. 

For complicated reasons, river levels can be at minus levels. One instance as to how this can happen is a long standing river gauge could have established a zero level water mark decades ago.  Currents might have deepened the channel at that point, so during drought, water is still there, but is running below the zero level of the gauge. 

This low water might last awhile, too.  Forecasters expect to river level at Memphis to remain near minus 11 feet until at least November 1.  If that river doesn't rise markedly in November, it'll be too late. The northern reaches of the river, say up by Minnesota and Iowa, will freeze, so barge traffic from the farms up that way will have to stop.

The winter could lock away moisture from the river until the spring thaw. In that case the Mississippi would stay low until then. Then, because everything will be behind, the supply chains for the 2023 harvest could also be disrupted. 

Much further downstream, in Plaquemines  Parish, Louisiana, residents were warned earlier this autumn that the drinking water drawn from the Mississippi River now has elevated levels of sodium and chloride, the Washington Post reported.   This can be dangerous for people on dialysis or low sodium diets. 

The problem is that the southward river flow has weakened so much due to the low water that salt water from the Gulf of Mexico is creeping northward, forming a wedge at the bottom of the river because salt water is heavier that fresh water. 

A little rain is in the forecast for parts of the Mississippi River basin over the next week, but it will be much less than needed to add substantial runoff into the river. 

Plus, you'd need a lot of widespread rain to have a noticeable effect on the Mississippi River. You have to consider the Mississippi has big tributaries like the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas and Illinois rivers. 

Which basically means we need a lot of heavy rain from Montana to Pennsylvania and from northern Minnesota to Louisiana.

 For people who live near the Mississippi River, the low water is quite a novelty. There's a really cool island in the river called Tower Rock. It's basically an oval shaped cliff topped with trees. Normally, you can only get there by boat.

But the river is so low, people can just walk to it without even getting their feet wet, says CNN.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a man walking along the river spotted what appeared to be an old shipwreck.  Archaeologists think it might be the Brookhill Ferry, which carried people and horse-drawn wagons from one side of the river to the other. Newspaper archives say the ship sank during a bad storm in 1915, the Associated Press reports. 

 The novelty of walking to an island is nice, as is finding centuries old shipwrecks. But for a practical and economics standpoint, we'd better hope the Mississippi River regains its might - and fast!