Here in the Mississippi Delta, we are looking at a record-setting rise coming down the Mighty Muddy, and my insurance agent tells me that flood insurance is selling better than hot cakes.  

We believe (as I write this) that the levees will hold (or burst on the other side of the River) and that we’ll make it through okay, but what makes me nervous is that all over the world we’re hearing about earthquakes on an ever-increasing basis.

What if we have a quake on the New Madrid Fault whilst the Father of Waters is rampaging to a record height? That scares me.

My Uncle Sam lived across the road from where my house is now, out at Brownspur, and water was ten feet deep here in 1927, which was estimated to have a crest only about a foot more than what is forecast for this month. They moved everything to the second floor and lived there for the duration of the Flood, and Aunt Rose never let anyone paint over the mud line in the pantry, so she could show us young’uns where the water had stood in the Great Flood.

Betsy and I have begun moving some of the valuables and furniture upstairs just in case. I also have a ramp that will let me drive our cars and truck up onto the Mammy Grudge ditchbank, if I need to, then head for the hills, literally.

I’ve read several accounts of The Great Flood, and the events leading up to that seemed too similar to the kind of storms we’re seeing progress across the South and Mid-West  a couple of times each week.

In the ‘73 High Water, the levees held (although a couple of dangerous sandboils on either side of the levee threatened to collapse it) but the spring storms dumped many inches of rain on the Delta and, as we know, water has to drain south, then into the River down around Vicksburg.  

Yet if the Mighty Muddy is too high for water to be able to drain into it, what happens is that all the streams back up and overflow, coming back north. In ‘73, the built-up mound of Highway 12 between Tchula, Belzoni and Hollandale was where the flood waters backed up to, leaving Brownspur thankfully ten miles north of the rising waters, until the River started falling and could drain the Delta.

Yesterday, as I write this, was the day after a powerful storm that blew through, but a second storm was following close behind, and produced an effect that I had never seen before.  

You have to realize that I’m an old Navy officer, and have actually been through hurricanes at sea four times. I have seen green water breaking on the bridge windshield of a carrier, 78 feet above the water line.

If anyone ever tells you that “There ain’t no such thing as a hundred-foot wave,” then you send him to see your Uncle Bob.

As an aside to that, I grew up hunting on the Mississippi River, and when that sucker is high, with a strong southwest wind like today, I have seen ten-foot waves on the Mighty Muddy, and been cussed by older, wiser hunters for daring to cross during those times. Rightfully so.

But back to today, between the storms.  Betsy and I were having coffee in the den, and I walked over to check the barometer on the wall by her chair.  I have a low-pressure sensitivity that sounds an alarm in my head and spine.  Sure enough the needle stood at 29.4.  Then I tapped it, and it dropped to 29.37.

The lowest it’s calibrated for is 29.0.  I saw it go to 29.1 once when a tornado skipped over the house, and marked that point.  A ship’s barometer measures down to 28.0, however, and I even saw ours drop below that once, when we were in the eye of Hurricane Betsy on the carrier USS Okinawa, as mentioned above.

So, I’m looking at a barometer on my den wall registering 29.37, and looked outside – the sun was shining! I’d have thought something was wrong with the instrument, but it’s never failed to be low when I get that hair-standing-up feeling.

We are in a really dangerous weather pattern here, folks. I ain’t fooling.

Tornadoes last night killed over 350 people, the news said, and dumped another five or six inches of rain into an already-flooded river system.  Scary!