The Morganza spillway opened yesterday at 3:00 pm, local time, for the first time since 1973. The video below is taken by helicopter, without narration and shows the opening of the first bay in the spillway. In the opening seconds of the video, notice the water on the far side of the locks. That's normally dry land. None of that water is there when the river is at pool stage. The road over the spillway is Louisiana Highway 1 and it's the route I take to get to Baton Rouge and points south. Milady has kin-folk in New Roads, LA which is just south of the spillway. Normally, it's about 60 feet from the roadway to the bottom of the spillway.
I attempted to embed the video, without success. The link is here. Here's another video, courtesy of PBS.
Parts of south Louisiana won't feel this water until Tuesday. As the week goes on, they'll open several bays a day until they get the flow they want.
Pawpaw
ReplyDeletethat PBS link appears to have been pulled. If its the one I think it is from the initial image, then the original is here
As of last night, there were 9 bays open. Looks ugly for the Basin.
ReplyDeleteRivrdog
Now up to 11 gates open...
ReplyDeleteI knew this was going to be a bad one when Vicksburg hit an all-time high water mark last week, two days before the crest passed...