For the third time in four years, unusually low rainfall has caused water levels on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to drop significantly, disrupting safe navigation and leading to major shipping delays.

Mississippi River

Low water levels along the Mississippi River are causing significant challenges for shipping operations, particularly for tug and barge traffic. This marks the third occurrence of such conditions in the past four years, with the current situation affecting the ability to transport goods efficiently due to shallower and narrower channels.

The primary cause is ongoing drought in the Ohio River Basin, which supplies a substantial portion of the water to the lower Mississippi. While some rainfall has occurred, it has not been sufficient to resolve the issue, and only temporary relief is expected. Authorities are using lock and dam operations to help manage water levels, but the impact on shipping is likely to continue until more consistent rainfall returns.

Monitoring river levels along the Mississippi

We're not talking about flooding. We're talking about low water levels along the Mississippi and Alex I believe you and I were talking our memories maybe aren't as good as what they were at once were right But this is three out of the last four years Number one we were dealing with this and number two. Why is this so important? Why are we even talking about this? Well, yeah, you're right. It is This is like the third time in the last four years where we're seeing low levels now I don't think we're gonna get quite down to those levels of say three four years ago It's important because when you when you drop the river levels the Mississippi and the Ohio They're they're major shipping channels. And what we have on here are tug and barge operations These tugs push a lot of barges up and down the river Sometimes they can push as many as 10 12 barges at once But when you have low water levels, the channel is shallow. It's narrow There's shoals in the channel That creates a problem for safe Navigation the last thing they want to do is have a have a tug and barge run aground and they have to get towing Operations out there. So when the channels low like this They can't haul as heavy a load and they can't push as many of those barges And when they can't do that the cost for moving those goods skyrockets Alex let's talk about how we got there. The first thing, you know, I'm always surprised and I knew it was like this But when you look at the Mississippi watershed, I believe it covers a massive 60% of the United States. The first thing we're gonna look at is the drought monitor and you've always pointed this out though It's a big watershed But you always tell me it's the Ohio River. That's one of the most important tributaries in to the Mississippi Yeah, the Ohio actually contributes more water into the main stem Mississippi than the main stem it does above the Ohio So pretty much the lower portion of the Mississippi River there from the Ohio confluence on down That's mostly the Ohio River kicking in there and the water levels are low in the Ohio as well The drought is kind of encompassing a good chunk of the Ohio Basin there as you can see those darker shadings indicate more severe drought And the rainfall, you know again, we've had some decent amounts of rain last 30 days Toward like the Missouri River and the upper Mississippi, but you know some in the lower, Ohio River But for the most part the drought is high and I know this is a graphic that kind of really illustrates your point About how low parts of the Mississippi? How low the Mississippi is right now in some spots? Yeah, you see on that graph there that it's showing negative values Well, how can you have a negative value in a river? the problem is they set these gauges up but a certain point in time and because of natural erosion dredging The channel can actually get farther and farther down than where the when the gauge was originally placed So that's how you get these negative values. The point is and they still track all this stuff, though, even though it's negative So you get down there? We have a little ways to go yet here until we get into some record territory but we certainly could have like a top five or six record low levels along a good chunk of the the lower portion of the Ohio And the Mississippi they can they can use some lock and dam operations on the Ohio to help regulate that We have been getting some rainfall sporadic rainfall here and there That's why I don't think that we're going to have the the serious situation that we had three four years ago But it is getting down there and it is affecting tug and barge operations and will continue to do so here Probably for the next month or so at least until we start getting some larger storm systems, hopefully in portions of the basin I'm showing the future rainfall with the storm coming across the central u.s And into the Ohio Valley and into the Ohio River out a brief event. Yeah Problem it's not going to stick around for a very long and it will help it'll give you a little bump Because it'll it'll some of that will fall in the Missouri. Some of it will fall in the Ohio the Illinois Rivers they all contribute in there, of course the Tennessee But it's not the total answer You got to keep getting rainfall on a regular basis and the problem right now was it's more infrequent than it is frequent. Mm-hmm

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