The Mississippi River usually drops to very low levels (below zero on the Memphis gauge) in the fall, but for most of this past fall it was 15 feet or higher. Now it's rising to some mild flood levels: the current forecast says it'll crest at 32.5 feet toward the end of the week. Almost nobody in the city of Memphis will be affected because the city sits on a high bluff. The low-lying bottomlands will start to get flooded, and some water may lap into the southern end of the Greenbelt Park, but most Memphians won't notice a thing. Personally I enjoy the high-water periods because of the increased acreage of liquid real estate that I can paddle on.
A thick fog hung over the river when I arrived down there yesterday morning. It would eventually give way to sunny skies--a welcome sight after a week that was mostly dreary and rainy. The afternoon high yesterday would be close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the morning when I paddled it was in the low 40s and quite nippy. I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the river and maintaining a good solid pace.
When I arrived at the river to paddle this morning the temperature was 50 degrees and rising, so I left the pogies on the dock. I paddled for 100 minutes, going out of the harbor and up the Mississippi along the Tennessee bank to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then up the Wolf for ten or twelve minutes before turning around and heading back. The river level was 29.4 feet, and it looked like the water was just a half-foot shy of starting to spill onto the Greenbelt Park in a few places.
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