Currently in Portland — September 27, 2023: Yup, more rain

The weather, currently.

There is no mistaking that the rainy season is here! This Wednesday will be more of the same, with high temps hanging out in the low 60s and rain on and off all day. And like Monday and Tuesday, we’ve still got that chance of thunderstorms, plus wind gusts strong enough to knock over lightweight outdoor items. I’ve already been chasing some nursery pots around the yard, from summer garden projects that aren’t quite done. And yet it’s already time for raking! I’ve picked up a roll of hardware cloth so I can start a leaf bin. If you’re not familiar with the concept, leaves can break down into leaf mold, which is a fantastic amendment for the garden. So while I like to leave a lot of leaves on the ground for bug and critter habitat, I do rake from walkways, and then save the leaves up to feed back to the garden next year.

— Stella Harris

What you need to know, currently.

With drought affecting broad swaths of the Mississippi River valley, river levels have dropped so low that saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico is creeping upriver in the Mississippi itself. At its current rate of progression, the Mississippi will turn too salty for water treatment plants at New Orleans to produce drinking water in just a few weeks.

Since saltwater is more dense than freshwater, the saltwater is actually moving upriver along the riverbed — within the river itself. Federal engineers that maintain the river channel have built a partial dam designed to slow the saltwater’s upstream progression, and increasingly extreme measures will need to be taken once the saltwater reaches New Orleans — like transporting freshwater by barge, and hastily building a water pipeline to the city.

Similar events happened in 1988, 1999, 2012, and again last year — but this one seems especially severe.

As global warming melts ice worldwide, sea level rise will make problems like this worse not just for Louisiana, but all coastal cities worldwide.

— Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

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