re: No Flow Rates, Levee System failure scenario.. quite possible

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Flow rates were widely available on many websites until last week. They started dropping off one by one, and now I have not been able to find any site that shows flow rates.

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First off to the origianl poster. WOW!!

Let me try to keep this simple, but I have been knee deep in measuring flows on the Miss River, Bonnet Carre and Morganza. Today is my first day off in 2 weeks.

Flows rates are determined by making discharge measurements on the river at different river stages. A stage/discharge relationship is developed based on these measurements. So at a river stage of X feet, a Y amount of CFS is the discharge. As the river rises the discharge increases.

The reason why the flow rates were listed before is that discharge measurements have verified these flow rates at certain stages. Flow rates are then interpolated for the higher river stages where measurements are not made b/c the water did not get that high.

As the water rose this year discharge measurements have continued to be made. At most sites these interpolated values were not accurate. Remember we have not had water this high since 1973 so the last dicharge measurements at this high of water were made 38 years ago. Both the river and technology has changed. We can more accurately measure the discharge now then in the past.

Alot of the USGS ratings needed to be adjusted. Some have, some have not. Most of our guys are in the field making measurements everyday so the office work falls behind.

I would assume the same is happening for the Corps. I would guess the CORps decided to remove the interpolated values from the web rather than display incorrect flow rates.

That is the simple truth. Not some conspiracy to screw the public or keep them in the dark.