Wow! I won the “strange quark” (2nd place) award in a science writing contest, hosted by Three Quarks Daily, for blogging about the Mississippi River, floods, levees, and the illusion of control. As I wrote in the comments at 3QD: Wow! I never thought I’d actually win something for writing …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous Got flood fatigue yet? Too bad, because the wet weather and the high water keeps coming. Here is a quick round up of the notable flood-related news of the week. Mississippi River My post, ‘Levees and the illusion of flood control‘, has been nominated for the …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous One week ago today (28 May 2011), I had the chance to explore the lingering flooding along the Mississippi River and its tributary Big Muddy River in southern Illinois. The area was long past its crest; it is upriver of Cairo and the Birds Point Floodway. …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous I’ve got a shiny new Emriver Em2 river processes simulator (i.e., stream table), thanks to departmental equipment funds and enthusiastic colleagues. I’ve been on sabbatical this semester and away from campus, so I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but it is enticing …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous Even though we all think of the freezing point of water as 0 °C, very pure water remains a liquid until about -40 °C. Water crystallizes to ice in the presence of tiny nucleation particles in the atmosphere. These particles can be sea spray, soot, dust …
Flooding along the Mississippi River Last week, I wrote a post for the Scientific American Guest Blog on “Levees and the Illusion of Flood Control,” about the ways that while levees around individual communities may be good, the systematic leveeing of entire waterways is a bad long-term strategy. On Friday, …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous In case other events have crowded it out of your news feed, there’s record-breaking flooding going on in the Mississippi River basin. Snowmelt in the headwaters, combined with weeks of heavy rains in the middle reaches of the river basin, have pushed the system to its …
Major congratulations to two Watershed Hydrogeology Lab graduate students who have finished writing their MS theses and will defend them next week. Ralph McGee and Cameron Moore both started in our MS in Earth Science program in August 2009, and less than two years later they have each completed impressive …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous A few weeks ago, I was asked to answer some questions for a career profile section of a website aimed at students looking at college degree options. The website creators wanted to use me as their profile of a hydrologist, maybe because hydrology has been dubbed …
Cross posted at Highly Allochthonous Fargo, North Dakota is coming out of its 3rd snowiest winter since 1885. Snow continued to fall into late March, and daytime temperatures have only been above freezing for few weeks. At night, it’s still below freezing, though starting tomorrow night the forecast calls for …