Mississippi river could be impassable by Dec 10.

What happened to Edgar Cayce's map of the mississippi river being 100 miles wide? Maybe that's what happens they do some dumb shit that ends up flooding the entire mississippi..

What the hell is wrong with this stupid river. It either has too much water or not enough water.

... and the annual flooding of the surrounding farmland provides the amazing fertility of the soil -- not unlike the processes of the Nile. If the drought persists, the farmland will degrade in fertility as well as the obvious drought consequences.

It is a big deal for barges. I've been writing about this topic for a long time. Most people have no idea that barges dramatically reduced trucking because of fuel costs and the high payload amounts. When the river is low, then the payload can't be high because it will hang and scrape on the river bottom. This means less than full loads and more of them. It causes a cascade delay.

Sure they can dredge to get traffic moving, as long as it's humanly possible to engineer it, but it might mean a lot of unloading and reloading on the other side of the low lying water level. Expensive, isn't it?

We're getting a double whammy too. The drought hammered the corn crop. A large portion was used for ethanol production. This means a high likelihood of increased fuel prices, right when we'll be using more trucking because of less barge use too.

Barges transfer coal for utility plants. If they can't get coal to them, they have to truck it in, and that's very expensive.

Salt is also brought in for areas that need more due to snow production.

Very little rain falls in Winter. If we have a drier Winter than normal, then the rivers could get very low.

Already the aquifers are very low, especially in the Ogallala region.

This will be most relative to grain prices. Barges are a cheap form of transportation from grain hubs such as St. Louis and Kansas City, any disprution in that means those grains will have to be transported by rail or truck more than doubling shipping expenses.

Also, you would see an immediate jump in the contract prices of grains because of the shipping issues. A double whammy...

... and the annual flooding of the surrounding farmland provides the amazing fertility of the soil -- not unlike the processes of the Nile. If the drought persists, the farmland will degrade in fertility as well as the obvious drought consequences.