re: Temperature to freeze the Mississippi River

Global warming

Water current and dissolved solids or minerals, salts, play a role and lower the freeze point.

I think, just maybe, there are better things to focus your brain power on.

I don't know if that could happen, but back in the eighties, I took my kids to the levee to watch the large chunks of ice from up North floating down the river.

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Wow, its almost like some of you never learned what kinetic energy is in school.

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+1.

The kinetic energy generated from flow speed and the turbulence needs to be countered and getting air temperature down to 32 degrees, even if it were every night for months, simply isn't going to do it.

The Mississippi River at Baton Rouge flows at ~470,000 cubic feet per second. Niagra Falls, by contrast, flows at a max of ~100,000 cubic feet per second and has never frozen completely over aside from one instance in the 1800's, but that was due to ice blocking the river before the falls. With water movement like this, it's not just temperature but how long it stays that cold.

Also, successive layers of snow and ice can act as insulation, which also figures into the issue.

Considering the flow rate, I would say temps to freeze over the Mississippi River at BR or NO would have to get below freezing and stay there for a long time (the colder it stayed, the less time). Were we to see temps staying below 30 for a week we would likely see freezing along the shorelines where water moves less, but to get a solid freeze completely across the river (even if it's just a thin sheet in the center) at the least I think we would likely need to see highs only in the 20s for a good month (possibly longer).

0 Kelvin

It would have to be sustained for several days in the 20s. It couldn’t get to warm during the day either.

The upper Missouri River gets that way in NE Nebraska but it takes a long sustained cold. Not a few nights.

Probably standard time since the sun is out less ?? Right?

The Red River froze over when I was in HS. Dont recall the exact temps but it was in single digits for days.

that sounds extremely suspect. It’s been single digits here for days and the flathead river is no monster either and I’ve never seen it do that. I’ve been here in the dead of winter many times and it’s never come remotely close to freezing from bank to bank that I’ve ever seen.

Eta. Must be the strength of flow that makes the difference from the red river but the Mississippi at Nola is probably just as strong as it gets