THE FREAKING MISSISSIPPI RIVER IS DRYING UP.

[TrumanTheTiger]

55. Tower Rock is just south of St. Louis...

…so water levels there are heavily dependent on the flow upstream (north) of there, including tributaries like the Missouri, Illinois, and Des Moines Rivers.

To flood (or dry up) the Lower Mississippi (downstream/south of Cairo, IL, and its confluence with the Ohio), there needs to be a change in the Ohio basin.

Remember the Flood of ‘93? Just about everything in the Upper Mississippi basin flooded, but there was nothing in the Lower Mississippi: no flooding in/around Memphis, Vicksburg, Greenville, New Orleans, etc (and the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t have to open the spillway north of New Orleans). That’s because the Lower Mississippi is more reactive to what’s going on in the Ohio River Basin since more water goes into the Lower Mississippi from the Ohio than the Upper Mississippi (if you stand at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, more water is passing by you on your left—from the Ohio—than your right).

In ‘93, the Ohio Basin was in a drought, so no flooding in the Lower Mississippi.