Reply #22: FWIW....they are calling it the 500 year flood. [View All]

ie: The Big One.

Dr. Jeff Masters is the co-founder of Weather Underground, an invaluable weather site:

The levees on the Lower Mississippi River are meant to withstand a “Project Flood”-- the type of flood the Army Corps of Engineers believes is the maximum flood that could occur on the river, equivalent to a 1-in-500 year flood. The Project Flood was conceived in the wake of the greatest natural disaster in American history, the great 1927 Mississippi River flood. Since the great 1927 flood, there has never been a Project Flood on the Lower Mississippi, downstream from the confluence with the Ohio River (there was a 500-year flood on the Upper Mississippi in 1993, though.) On Sunday , Major General Michael Walsh of the Army Corps of Engineers, President of the Mississippi Valley Commission, the organization entrusted to make flood control decisions on the Mississippi, stated: “The Project Flood is upon us. This is the flood that engineers envisioned following the 1927 flood. It is testing the system like never before.”
Good info at the link: ( below the headline and video)

http://www.swmm2000.com/profiles/blogs/is-this-the-big-one-the-flood?xg_source=activity