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Northern snow melt could delay grain shipping on the Mississippi River

High water on the Mississippi River is typical during spring, but the manager of a co-op on the river says they are on alert for worse conditions that will impact grain shipping.

Roger Hugenberg is with Ursa Farmers Cooperative in west central Illinois.

“We’ve had a limited number of days that we could ship and actually receive barges. I think we’ve had four days since the river opened up that we could actually load barges north of lock and dam 20.”

He tells Brownfield it looks like the water will go down in the next few days, but they are fearful of an event similar to locations near the Missouri River.

“We are also aware of a tremendous amount of snow pack north of Iowa and the fear of a rapid warm up coupled with some additional precipitation would push a lot of water. The soil is already fully saturated and anything more that happens is going to be massive runoff.”

He says the river must be below 18 feet for the lock to open and barring any more rain or snow melt from the north, it will hopefully open in early April.