"World food prices are expected to remain at historically high levels as a result of crop losses from serious flooding in the US midwest.

The floods have devastated at least 10 per cent of the corn crop in the US state of Iowa and have had an equally devastating effect on this year's soybean harvest."

Full story: US flooding locks in record food prices - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

More Stories

USDA mulls all options on Midwest flood aid | Reuters

Midwest Floods Send Corn Prices Soaring - Science - redOrbit

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"The federal government said Wednesday that 20 to 30 more levees may overflow the Mississippi River from Burlington, Iowa down to St. Louis.

Twenty levees have already overflowed this week, the Army Corps of Engineers said. The other levees could overflow if sandbagging efforts fail to raise the levees' levels.

The levees in danger protect rural, industrial and agricultural areas — not heavily populated towns. The levees protecting large towns are not as at risk of overflowing, officials said."

Full Story: The Associated Press: Midwest flooding may cause more levee overflows

More Stories

Midwest farmland flooding boosts food prices | Reuters

Washington Times - Politics, Breaking News, US and World News - Katrina lessons at work in Midwest

Mississippi River Could Overtake an Estimated 27 Levees

Midwest flood woes head south - Los Angeles Times

Video

YouTube - Feds: 27 Levees Could Overflow if Sandbags Fail

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We've (my family and I) been watching these floods with great interest. My father predicted these, although in a different way.

In 1965, Dad was the mayor of Moline, Illinois. I was 9. The weather conditions in the upper Midwest that winter and spring were like this: Wet fall that saturated the ground. Hard freeze to seal it in. Heavy snows all winter. Quick spring thaw with heavy rains. Rains melted the snow, with no place for the water to go. The ground was still frozen and saturated. The rivers were still frozen. They had thawed enough to cause "ice jams" of "riverbed to surface" ice piled up behind the dams.

They tried spreading coal dust on the river ice to absorb heat from the sun to melt it, as well as dynamite to clear the channel. No joy. They let us out of school to help sandbag around the Water Works (which was saved). 10 years later, the 6' high high-water marks on the buildings downtown were still visible.

This year was shaping up to be the same "perfect storm" of early spring flood conditions, but it didn't materialize. However, these heavy late spring rains more than made up for it with these unprecedented late spring floods. If these rains had come a couple of months ago, when there was still snow on the ground and ice on the rivers, the result would have been biblical.

(BTW, when the '65 floods were over, with Dad being mayor, the streets department delivered couple of dump truck loads of sandbags to our house, and I had a couple of years of the best fort building. )

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