Low water levels bring thousands to Tower Rock

Posted

A well-known landmark in Wittenburg is always visible year-round but is rarely able to be approached.
That is until now.
As the water levels of the Mississippi River continued to fall due to a prolonged drought, visitors have flocked to the river to see what the receding shoreline revealed.
On any other day before the water levels began to drop, Tower Rock would have been an island within the main channel, in the township of Brazeau. Now, however, a dry stretch of land allows visitors to walk to the once-isolated landmark.
Tower Rock, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, can only be reached when the water level is below 1.5 feet at the Chester, Illinois, river gauge, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation. As of Monday, the water level at the gauge was 0.22 of a foot. It had consistently measured under the 1.5-foot threshold starting on the morning of Oct. 11 at midnight.

On Sunday, thousands of people had traveled toward the river, creating a massive traffic jam that stretched for miles. That jam became dangerous among the hundreds in the area that a train scraped and damaged the sides of several vehicles that were parked near the tracks. No one was injured, but the train stopped, blocking both railroad crossings and leaving dozens of cars stuck for around three hours.
More than 55 percent of the contiguous United States is in drought, according to the US Drought Monitor, which is the largest area since April. And more than 133 million people live in those drought-stricken areas; the biggest population affected since 2016.
Severe drought covers more than 70 percent of Arkansas and nearly 40 percent of Missouri, up from just five percent a month ago. Several locations have seen record-low precipitation over the past few weeks, including Memphis, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Springfield, Missouri. The forecast from the Climate Prediction Center is dry, with below-average rainfall in the outlook through at least October 23.
The drought’s early autumn expansion in the central US has had a significant impact on the Mississippi River. In Memphis, the river was at its lowest level since 2012 this week and its third-lowest on record. The forecast calls for it to decline further, to the second-lowest level on record.
In total, more than 40 river gauges in the Mississippi River Basin are reporting low water levels,