Louis River News

The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory reports ice cover for all of the Great Lakes combined at around 52%, thanks to milder temperatures and gusty winds over the past several weeks. On March 1, nearly 89 percent of the Great Lakes were covered in ice. In just four weeks, the ice coverage on the Great Lakes has decreased almost in half. Winter is fading in the Northland, as it always does, but markedly faster than the past two years. Lake Erie reports ice coverage at around 69%, Lake Superior at 66%, Lake Huron at 58%, Lake Michigan at 21%, and Lake Ontario at 19%. The Iowa Great Lakes are officially declared ice-free for another season. The ice has been off most of western Lake Superior for a couple weeks now. Ice in the Duluth harbor and lower St. Louis River is going fast.

The U.S. Coast Guard has issued a safety advisory for a 24-mile stretch of the upper-Mississippi River near St. Louis due to high water conditions. From mile marker 160, near the mouth of the Meramec River south of St. Louis to mile marker 184 near St. Louis, vessels were advised against downstreaming operations. The advisory may become mandatory later on Tuesday if water levels keep rising. Downstreaming is a barge fleeting procedure where a towboat approaches a barge fleet from upstream. This procedure is dangerous during high water conditions or when the current is strong, and has resulted in a number of fatalities and vessel incidents in the past. The St. Louis gauge read 24.8 on Tuesday morning.

Traffic on the mid-Mississippi River was picking up this week from Davenport, Iowa, southward as ice melt improved navigation and locks were open to pass barges, river officials said Tuesday. “There are vessels in pool 14 near Le Claire, Iowa, through to St. Louis,” said Ron Fournier, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman for the Rock Island District. About a half-dozen tows were traveling from Le Claire, Iowa, at lock and dam 14 just north of Davenport, to Muscatine, Iowa. But the the bulk of the traffic, about 70 tows, was moving from Muscatine (river mile marker 457) southward to St. Louis (river mile marker 180), Fournier said. Ice was still keeping barges from moving north of Le Claire, river officials said.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the largest independent institution of its kind in the world, recently began developing a new piston corer for retrieving sediments from the ocean floor. Once complete in 2006, the deep-water coring system will be the largest in the U.S. and among the biggest in the world. The corer’s enormous weight — 25,000 pounds — coupled with the environmental demands associated with working in water up to 20,000 ft. deep presented major technical challenges to the system required to lower the corer to the sea floor then recover it, along with its ancient sediment samples. Located in Cape Cod, Mass.…