With all the interest in how high the Mississippi River is I decided to go over and see for myself, closeup. I didn’t have to go far, I live three blocks away. There’s actually a small overlook with park benches on the top of the levee and there is a parking area at the foot of the levee. No sooner did I get out of my car and start walking up with my camera, some government worker came running up yelling that I couldn’t park there. They really are super sensitive about the levee integrity, so I ended taking my pictures from a different point where there was parking further away from the levee proper.

Once I was able to make it up top the view was pretty surprising, the water level is as high as I have ever seen it in my life and I was born here and lived within a few blocks for a good portion of that time. In the first photo I am standing on top of the levee and the ship’s water line looks almost level with me. Actually it’s about 5 or 6 feet lower which doesn’t sound bad until you realize that the road behind and below me is about 20 feet lower than I am. So basically the river is about 15 feet higher than the level ground, so that’s kinda scary if you can imagine the river breaking through and flooding the area.

In this next photo, I’m standing in the exact same spot but I just turned to my left to try and show the difference in height between the water level on the right and the road on the left. It’s kind of hard to tell the difference in the photo because of the perspective.

The next couple of photos I took just for fun from about the same spot and thought they were kinda cool. All the pictures were taken just across the river from the uptown New Orleans area.

So there you have it, a few pictures that kinda, sorta give you an idea of how much water is at stake.

And here’s one more from a Google satellite view of my immediate area where I marked some points of interest. Click the image for a much larger and readable view.

Here’s something I stumbled across recently, a video on YouTube with a song called “When the Levee Breaks” by Memphis Minnie and Joe McCoy recorded in 1927 I think. Of course the song became a lot more famous when Led Zeppelin re-recorded it, lol. They didn’t have an embed link so I couldn’t post it here, but here’s a still from the video, you can catch it here.

Anyway, I’m just full of pictures today aren’t I? And here’s to hoping that no one else gets flooded out by the river, got my fingers crossed!