Be glad you are not on the Mississippi. The Father of Waters is pissed. He wants his valley back.

He wants it back every spring and fall. Soon, we'll cease to call it a river and refer to the Great Mississippi Sea. Kansas City, Kansas will be on one coast, while East St. Louis will be on t'other. Then there will be two countries, West America and East America. We can then have a new war between the states, this time, East vs. West.

Look up John McPhee's article on the Atchafalaya. It will be interesting when New Orleans becomes obsolete.

The men who designed that mill, would never countenance the building flooding, they would have consulted river flood levels and built in a safety factor for what we now call the 200-year flood occurrence.

This modern flooding is a consequence, I would guess of too little thought when upstream carparks and large impervious areas are drained into the river with little thought. These create near instantaneous flows whereas before these undeveloped areas would have been grass and highly absorbent of moisture (thus releasing water flow slowly and reducing peak flow height).

Too bad, the higher flows are probably overtopping the original damp-proof course and creating lasting damage.

Beautiful picture. Where is this mill??...looks kind of like one of the original mills at Lowell.