Page 28 - River System News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Homes. they are all inundated like what you see there in tunica. down in the very southern most county is wilkinson county. they have a couple of communities in the same situation. there are some river counties, mississippi river counties, that are not flooding right now. that's because there are high bluffs. if you look at vicksburg to natches, there are high bluffs. along the northern part of mississippi and the southern most county, as well. we are starting to have significant flooding on the yazu water system. you have back water flooding. we anticipate as many as 850 homes affected on tha...

Much water pressing against those levees for so long. you mentioned one remarkable factoid, which is right now, the river is at three miles wide. right now, we are at riverside drive, a road that goes near the river but it shouldn't be in the river. that's the way it is right now. there is the mighty mississippi. what seems to be a current, the waves are flowing to the north and the main river is flowing to the south. that's the way it should be. we have a little bit of an eddy here and south winds that are pushing the water in all directions. it is kresticresting right now. that doesn't mean ...

Orleans may 23rd before this is all done. why is that? i want to draw your attention to how big the mississippi river basin is. we go from new orleans then we include the tennessee valley all the way up the appalachian trail. it topped the highest part of that mountain range. one goes that way, some rivers go that way. almost up to buffalo. down into central ohio back into minnesota. all the way to montana and then down through the continental divide. that entire river system, that is the drainage to the river that you are standing in front of right now. it is why it is taking so long for this...

Back now to our top story, the massive battle underway at this hour to try to control a swelling river. the mississippi is now threatening to crest in just hours. hard to believe that when that happens it could get even worse than these pictures you're seeing, and the city under the biggest threat right now is memphis, tennessee. the river is expected to crest there later today at 48 feet. that's 14 feet over flood stage. but it's still just under a record of 48.7 feet that was set back in 1937, during the most catastrophic flooding the region had ever seen. the flooding is also affecting othe...

Of the southern explosion releasing some of that water out of the flood way. later they'll do a third hole in that levee and make a crevasse there that will free things up a little bit. this has been designed for this. as the usgs, the army corps of engineers and the nature conservancy will tell you every river needs its flood plain. >> the river system needs its flood plain. the flood plain is part of the river. that's the low lying areas adjacent to the river. during high water flows it would naturally spread out of those and take energy out of that system and help convey that water downstre...