CAIRO, IL – Last week’s freezing temperatures continued to impact boats and barges on Tuesday. The upper Mississippi River was frozen for nearly 15 miles – reaching just north of Cairo, Illinois. All this ice brought river traffic to a standstill last weekend, causing major traffic jams.
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Boats and ships were slowed for miles, with ice covering the upper Mississippi River from mile marker three to mile marker 16. “There was a large amount of ice spilled, more or less alone, on quite a substantial portion of the upper Mississippi River .’ said Lt. Samuel Kulp.
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Lt. Kulp, of the Marine Safety Unit in Paducah, said the ice formed in the north and came here, and freezing temperatures over the past week have caused it to pile up. “So yesterday afternoon, around two o’clock, there was an ice crevasse, which is essentially a huge buildup right there at the I-57 bridge, and it caused the river to physically recede. It stopped the flow of the river and that broke mid-afternoon yesterday,” he said.
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“And so a lot of that ice is flowing into the lower parts of the Mississippi, and yesterday’s rain and warm temperatures are helping to break up the ice,” Lt. Kulp said. Until then, he said people should stay off the water.
They have already seen incidents of boats getting stuck in the ice. “We had a situation where a towing vessel may have had a buoy wrapped around the vessel. A lot of the aids have come loose and are floating free with the ice, so the channel is not marked as it should be,” Lt. Kulp said.
Lt. Kulp said the Mississippi River should be ice-free within a day or two. Fog also prevents many boats and barges from resuming normal operations.
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