Torrential Rain!

[Riley Smith]

Mississippi has sessions of rain that feel like the whole sky is falling water. It has happened to me a few times in my life and can be an amazing sight. You'll never believe that so much water can fall from the sky and it comes with it's own roar. I've often wondered if anyone has drowned just from rain. Most of the time we get a flash flood advisory but this evening we got an actual WARNING. It had rained 6-8 inches in a little over an hour in a nearby community. Videos look like a lake. WILD! All that came with a tornado warning too, and as I returned back home after church I stopped on the backroad and could see the storm through a clearing behind an old farm. It was HUGE, rotating, and had the weirdest ruffles all over the sky before the blackness. I was lucky enough to get a "clear" view through all the scud. Man, that was something!

[Captain Kidd]

The sky can do some strange things! This is quite the front moving through.

[Riley Smith]

Round Two this morning. Red boxes to the west, although we usually don't have to worry about one of those pavement sucking monsters that the Mid-West or those further north get. At least it isn't cold (71F) And hopefully the rain will get rid of the oak flowers. Everything is nasty because of all the pollen.

[Grith]

We live on Australia's equivalent to the Mississippi The Murray River in South Australia. I have looked at cruising the Mississippi and been told it's just not that type of sailing destination at all. Conversely The Murray still has the old paddle steamers, the riverboat historic towns and lots of tranquil wilderness areas and is navigable mast up for hundreds of miles thanks to powerlines and bridges being set higher than the larger paddle steamers and having a series of lochs to keep the water at navigable depth for these.
As for rain What's That? 😂
We live directly on The Murray with unlimited fresh water for domestic use but rain is as rare as hens teeth here being located basically in a desert made green for a distance either side of the river by pumped water.
I have however experienced upturned bathtub type heavy rain having lived in both Kangaroo Valley one of Australia's wettest southern areas and visited and sailed in our tropical north affected by huge rain bearing cyclonic lows which are currently drowning/flooding  an area about the size of Texas!
I love a sunburnt country a land of droughts and flooding rain! 🙂

[Riley Smith]

Girth, the Mississippi River has many areas that are not exclusive from sailboats. However, the current in the river is always a factor. It is very wild along the river in many places. We're more semi-tropical and get a LOT of rain. That's no big deal really, until one of those deluges hit and overwhelms the drain off. Our local river ( well, one of them) is sort of like a small Mississippi River and has current in high water, but at other times is great to sail, with white sandbars and all sorts of wildlife. On a day like today, warm and rainy, my kids would have been hitting the mudholes 15 years ago and playing in the water. Thankfully the front lost some of it's punch and it only rained as it came through.

[Norm L.]

Grith, the Mississippi River is loaded with commercial traffic from the lengths of around 15m quite small work tugs or crew boats to the occasional 210-230m bulk carriers or tankers.

On the opposite side of that was my first entry into Sydney harbor with a harbor pilot looking over our Captain and the young green 3rd mate me. It was a Sunday with the harbor full of sailboats, many nice sized, the usual ferry systems and our single old freighter. (Built in the UK 1937 and torpedoed and rebuilt twice in WWII.)

[Spot]

We had rain followed by snow over the weekend. Maybe 3" (7cm) snow yesterday, will probably be done melting sometime tomorrow. We have been spoiled by some warmer late winter/early spring days previous.

We are close to Lake Pepin, or pool #4 of the Mississippi between Red Wing and Wabasha. Lots of recreational boating, some barges. The local small/homemade boat 'Messabout' meets there at Lake City as well.