Steele Bayou ??

[BR549]

A backed up 89ft water level? You wouldn't be doing much walking in Delta National south of Hwy 16. You can't hardly walk east of Long Bayou Greentree now! Man I've been walking round in those woods for over 40 years. I don't care what you think. It can be 92, 93 on one end and not but 85 on the other and you will still have parts of that place under water. I can assure you at 91 on a backed up river you won't even think about driving thru any of the roads in the forest!

[BR549]

First of all on a "flat" river as you speak of 38 ft on Vicksburg guage would not be 87 ft sea level. It's more like 43 ft. Maybe that will put a little more perspective on it. When they close the seawall at Vicksburg port it's about 89 to 90! And yes anytime the water is higher on the river side the gates are normally closed. There may be a time when they want to let some water in. This has been done several times to either fill or flush Eagle Lake. But for the most part they stay closed.

I'm not sure I'm following you? Are you saying that when the Vicksburg reads 43 feet that's really the equivalent to there being 87 feet of water lapping at the Steele Bayou gate which should put the area in the perspective of "flood stage"? This is not what I "found" to be true based on limited data I have looked at.

Look, I'm not a scientist, I could be forgoing large amount of information needed to evaluate this properly. I'm just trying to explain where I am in my current understanding of this. I wish to be corrected, so that I may fully understand this.

I arrived at my numbers when I did a comparison from all the historical data on the rivergages.com website for both the Vicksburg gauge and the riverside gauge. I found that historically, when the riverside reads 87 feet, MS at Vicksburg reads somewhere in the 37-39 foot range. Barring any huge rain event, the riverside water is mostly controlled by the MS river. Isn't it? I realize that the riverside reading is currently independent of the landside reading, but if the structure were not in place, the riverside reading would be the level for the region. Wouldn't it?

I don't happen to know anything about the seawall in Vicksburg. Is this part of the Yazoo drainage project also? When it gets closed, does it cause the Yazoo to back up toward the Steele Bayou? The river gauges that I have studied do not indicate anything about the status of the seawall.

Flood Satge @ Vicksburg is 43 ft That is also 89.23ft in MSL
Tonight @ 7 pm Vicksburg was at 45.17 on the guage or 91.40 MSL
Also Steele Bayou was Riverside 93.55 Landside 86.38

As you can see the Yazoo is higher than the MS right now and that is very confusing to some people. The mouth of Steele Bayou is several miles up the Yazoo from Vicksburg plus it's on a totaly different river.

Further upstream Big Sunflower @ Anguilla was 89.77 @ 7 pm
Last nite at the same time it was 86.18.

It will all be above 90 by Friday at least if not more. I was in the north end of the forest this afternoon. Not many ridges at all out of water up there. There's not a ridge in the forest much over 94 that I know of. I spec by the weekend you won't be able to drive thru the forest at all on the south end.

Wildfowler maybe this answers some of your questions. You can find all these stages on Riverguages.com Just tell it to put everything in real levels and it will give you the actual MSL at any reference poit you want to look at. Right now they are updating it 2 hr intervals.

[Caller1]

Heard it was backing up today....Is it?

[Wildfowler]

Heard it was backing up today....Is it?

As of 4:20 pm today when I checked it, landside reading is 87 feet.

http://www2.mvr.usace.army.mil/WaterCon ... &fid=&dt=S

[redherring]

As of today the land side at Steele Bayou is 90.7 and the river side is 98. Has anyone driven across DNF dummy line lately; is the whole forest flooded? Also does anyone know how the river side correlates to water levels in Eagle and Chotard lake?

[mudsucker]

Have they opened the gates yet????

[DanP]

scheduled to open on the 9th but the MS is falling a little faster than expected so it may be a day or two sooner

[mudsucker]

If the pumps were in place and used this year, the river would still recede as it is now. It would NOT have kept the area around Redwood flooded longer nor made it higher in my opinion as the amt. of flow(cfs) would have been miniscule in the great scheme of things.