Wife wanting to go to Chester IL

NWS Chart:

so.....

WHAT did 'man' do back in July '88  to drain the mighty Mississippi so low...??

HOW does the low water affect the barges getting goods up and down the river ??

Tows on the Upper Mississippi (everything upstream of the Ohio) can TECHNICALLY run 17 barges per tow (that's 3 wide, 5 long in FRONT of the towboat, and one on each 'hip'), but towboats generally won't run with barges on their hips except on rare occasions, and usually only when those barges are empty (sitting very high up), for a variety of reasons.

On the Lower Mississippi (Ohio downstream) towboats don't have locks and dams to concern themselves with- the river runs wild and free... so they'll usually run SIX wide and five long (30 barges).  I don't know for certain, but I don't see any reason why they COULDN'T run additional barges on their hips, but having them there, especially FULL, causes performance limitiations (waterflow limits through the propellers, off the flanking rudders, etc) that they probably wouldn't want.

Last week, I was piloting an 80ft 65 ton motorsailer down the Arkansas River.  It was clear that water levels were low, and we NEEDED it that way (mast was 51ft, and our three lowest bridge clearances were 52ft), but with a 6.5ft draft, we were finding the bottom every so often.  There was dredging going on immediatley downstream of Lock 1, where the White River Canal joins the Arkansas River canal bypass, and we got hung up in quite the mud bank that'd developed as a result of slow water circumstances... had to do some substantial acrobatics to shake loose from it, then survey the area thoroughly to find a passage for our twin keels.  There was a dredging crew working that specific spot, and a combination of traffic through, and the spoils transport, made the circumstance very unpredictable, and it didn't help that the air temperature was just a few degrees above freezing, but the water was warm, leaving a foot of wispy fog atop the river's surface.  One of the two canal locks was only open during the nighttime (they were doing daytime closures for maintenance) so it wasn't a traversal choice that we wanted to make.

But the waterflow IS low.  I was in front of my dad's house today, and pool flow at Upper Miss Lock and Dam 14 is almost zero.

Water at ANY point in the river clears up when this happens... first because the waterflow is coming to a basic stop (which causes the lightest sedimentary fractions to start falling out) and the serious reduction of towboat traffic has basically stopped prop-wash from stirring it up in the first place.  During wintertime, I can see down about 12 feet in front of what used to be my old place.  During summer, less than 3 inches...