•+The+River+Flood+of+2011

Find answers to the following questions and write them down. Be ready to share your answers in class.

 * 1. What is causing the Mississippi River flood now (in 2011)?[[image:800px-Pcpnweekending04292011.jpg width="640" height="366" align="right"]] **


 * 2. How many states in the Mississippi flood valley are affected by this flood? List each state by name.**

The Mississippi River floods in April and May 2011 are among the largest and most damaging along the flood-prone U.S. river in the past century. Comparisons are being drawn with the major Mississippi River floods in 1927 and 1993. In April 2011, two major storm systems tracked through much of the vast Mississippi River watershed, dumping record rainfall over large areas. Already rising from springtime snowmelt, the river, and many of its tributaries , began to swell to record levels by the beginning of May. Areas along the Mississippi itself experiencing flooding include Illinois, Missouri , Kentucky , Tennessee , Arkansas , Mississippi , and Louisiana. U.S. President Barack Obama declared the western counties of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi federal disaster areas.


 * 3. What relief attempt was done in Missouri to try to save the town of Cairo, Illinois?**


 * 4. What was damaged when that was done, and how many acres of land were affected?**

On May 3, the Army Corps of Engineers blasted a two-mile hole in the levee protecting the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Bird's Point-New Madrid floodway, flooding 130,000 acres of farmland in <span class="wiki_link_ext">Mississippi County, Missouri , in an effort to save the town of <span class="wiki_link_ext">Cairo, Illinois , from record-breaking flood waters. The breach displaced around 200 residents of Missouri's Mississippi and <span class="wiki_link_ext">New Madrid counties, who were forced to evacuate after a court approved the Corps of Engineers plan to breach the levee.



Resources for this page are from Wikipedia: [| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Mississippi_River_floods]