It's been a rainy week and it's shaping up to be a very wet month of February here. Last night the weatherman on the Channel 5 news said we've received over eight inches this month, about twice what's normal. It rained some more overnight and a little bit this morning. There's more rain and possibly some severe weather in the weekend forecast.
Rain right here in Memphis doesn't really affect the level of the Mississippi, but usually the rain systems we have here stretch northward and move eastward into watersheds like the Ohio and the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and those rivers feed the Mississippi upstream of here and drive the level upward. The other day I predicted that the NOAA's crest prediction would rise, and it has: right now the river is predicted to rise to 34.5 feet on the Memphis gauge. Official "flood stage" is 34 feet; at that level uninhabited bottomland starts to flood. The core city of Memphis sits on a high bluff, so it would take a flood of truly epochal proportions to threaten the city. Even the great 2011 flood, which topped out over 48 feet, didn't affect but a few low-lying wards of the city.
When Joe and I paddled on Tuesday, the rain hadn't arrived yet but it was warm (70s Fahrenheit) and incredibly windy. Our usual relaxed paddle in the harbor was quite tiring. On Wednesday it poured down rain all day and I was happy to stay in and do the strength routine. By yesterday morning that rain had moved out but it was still overcast with a temperature in the 40s when I did a 60-minute paddle.
I did the strength routine again today and now I await the meteorological drama that's on the way.
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