Mississippi River flood of 2011
Mississippi River flood of 2011, flooding of the Mississippi River valley in the central United States from late April to May 2011 on a scale not seen since the floods of 1927 and 1937. Thousands of square miles of agricultural and residential land were submerged by water that had surged over the banks of the Mississippi River system or that had been purposely diverted from large settlements through the blasting of levees and the opening of spillways.
The late winter and early spring of 2011 were filled with snowmelt and heavy rain events—including the Tornado Super Outbreak of 2011. As a result, the tributaries of the Mississippi and, consequently, the river itself began to swell in April. Because previous floods—particularly the Great Flood of 1927—had catalyzed the construction of numerous levees and spillways to contain and channel floodwaters, the path of the torrent was to a certain extent predictable and controllable. That system, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, assisted in determining approximately when and where the water would breach its banks and thus enabled state officials to shore up existing structures and evacuate residents.
The breach of levees in Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee precipitated the flight of thousands, though fatalities were restricted to several people who drowned in flash floods and flooding of tributaries in Arkansas in late April and an elderly man in Mississippi in May. The May 2 demolition of portions of a levee in Missouri prevented the inundation of the small Illinois town of Cairo, though the diverted water immersed 200 square miles (520 square km) of farmland.
Concerns that the levees could be breached in the Louisiana cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans—displacing thousands of people and shutting down a network of petroleum refineries that accounted for a substantial portion of domestic gasoline production—led to the opening of two spillways in May. With waters approaching the 1.25 million cubic feet (35,000 cubic metres) per second rate that indicated a possible risk to the cities, on May 9 the Bonnet Carre Spillway, approximately 30 miles (50 km) north of New Orleans, was partially opened, allowing overflow into Lake Pontchartrain, which drains into the Gulf of Mexico. Further channels were opened the following days. On May 14 the Morganza Spillway, about 35 miles (56 km) north of Baton Rouge, was partially opened, with more channels opened in the ensuing days. Nearly 3,500 people were evacuated. Those waters drained into the Atchafalaya River basin, covering some 3,000 square miles (7,770 square km), much of it cropland.
The effects of the flood extended beyond the exigencies of channeling water and relocating people in its path. The closure of a main grain-shipping port, Natchez, Miss., on May 16, sparked fears of the flood’s effect on commerce; the port was reopened shortly thereafter on a limited basis. Major shipments of coal from New Orleans were also delayed.
In the latter weeks of May, as the Mississippi River crested at record levels in many areas and then began to slowly recede, state officials began the process of evaluating evacuated properties for habitability. Many were condemned or would need to be gutted. The fate of cropland that had been immersed by floodwaters was uncertain. Though historically the residual silt from such floods boosted soil nutrients, the passage of the water through agricultural and residential areas led to the deposition of debris and bacteria. Chemicals that had entered the waterway amplified the already-prodigious effects of agriculture on the Gulf of Mexico, which has long suffered from an extensive dead zone caused by fertilizer-fed algae blooms that deoxygenate the water. The expansion of that zone with the increased fertilizer load would wreak havoc on fisheries already suffering because of the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.