More continental drainage 101

Well, it's pouring down rain here in Memphis today, and that might get up one's hopes for a major rise in the Mississippi, until one looks at today's national weather map:

As the map shows, the heaviest precipitation is south (i.e., downstream) of Memphis, where it will have no effect on our part of the big river.

There is, according to this map, some rain falling in the Ohio Valley, along the state line between Kentucky and Indiana and between Kentucky and Illinois.  That will send some water our way.  And I believe the rain showing up along the Kansas-Nebraska border is falling in the Missouri River watershed, so we'll eventually be paddling on that water.  It'll add some much-needed flow to the section of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo as well.

One interesting wrinkle in the Mississippi's watershed is southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas.  Rain that falls in that region does not affect the Mississippi at Memphis.  The region is part of the St. Francis River watershed, and the St. Francis flows almost as far south as Helena, Arkansas--well downstream of Memphis--before it joins the Mississippi.

Well, that's enough lecture for today.  Perhaps I will continue this lesson in a later post.