High Waters on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers on Feb 19, 2020

I've already talked about the high water at Wheeler, Wilson, Pickwick & Olmsted Dams and along the Mississippi River. These notes show more photos of high water in the area of the Mississippi+Ohio confluence.

While driving north on US-51+60+62 to the bridge over the Ohio River, my wife took a photo on the Mississippi River side and...

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 ...on her side.

This is probably what it normally looks like.

Street View

The Mississippi had two banks with two tows tied up at the real bank.

Again, that water on the passenger side would not normally be there. Just a few feet more, and the river would be on the road.

This is where the road starts climbing to the bridge.

It is easy to find this location in street view.

Street View

Everywhere she pointed the camera, there was water by the road. In this shot we not only see the portal of "our" bridge, we can see part of the US-60+62 bridge across the Mississippi River.

That is the CN/IC tracks passing under the bridge approach.

Again, normally it would all be dry.

Street View

It looks like CN has rather recently rebuilt that trestle.

Some empty barges parked next to the Ohio's real bank. The tow in the river is six barges wide and I'm guessing five barges long. I don't see a towboat on either end. I wonder how this tow is anchored.

This shows what the trunks of the trees along the bank look like.

Street View

A better view of the US-60+62 bridge over the Mississippi. We also see a tow being shoved up the Ohio River.

As we go over the bridge, a tow is being worked below us.

I guessed correctly, the tow we saw above is 6x5 with a couple of barges added on the port side of the front. We can see some of the trusses of the CN/IC Bridge in the background.

That water across the middle of the photo is normally land.

Fort Defiance Park is obviously under water. And those barges are on the Mississippi River.

If we turned left, we would go over that bridge over the Mississippi, but...

...we turned right to go to Cairo and Olmsted. Again, normally none of that water would be there.

In Cairo, I drove to an opening in the flood wall that I visited in Nov 2018. There were no flood boards in the opening at the end of 8th St back then. But they were half way up during this visit.

If I stood on my tiptoes, I could take photos over the flood boards. Here is a view looking left (upstream) and right.  Notice the river is not at the flood boards, so they are planning ahead.

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I noticed that the opening down at 4th St. was open, so I went down there and took a photo upstream and...

...downstream.

And then I zoomed in on the CN/IC bridge.

On the way to Olmsted, the Garmin GPS had us use I-55 up to Mounds Road. Even though I-57 is about a mile away from the Ohio, there was still plenty of water on the adjacent land.