Shipwrecked casino boat revealed as Mississippi River suffers from prolonged drought

The Mississippi River has revealed the carcass of a sunken casino boat as drought continues to ravage the second longest river in North America.

The Diamond Lady emerged from the depths in Memphis, Tennessee, this month after it sank during a winter storm in 2021 at the Riverside Park Marina.

The mud-covered vessel, and other smaller boats, were left exposed after the Mississippi dropped to near record lows amid persistent drought across two-thirds of the Midwest region and northern Great Plain states.

Nearly the entire stretch of the Mississippi River — from Minnesota to the river’s mouth in Louisiana — has experienced below average rainfall over the past two months.

As a result, water levels on the river have dropped to near-record lows, disrupting ship and barge traffic that is critical for moving recently-harvested agricultural goods such as soybeans and corn downriver for export. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the precipitous decline in water levels also revealed a century-old shipwreck.

Last week, 1,500 barges were stuck in vital shipping lanes as captains attempted to navigate the increasingly narrow passages. The US Army Corps of Engineers was dredging problem areas to help keep water flowing and ship traffic moving, theThe Wall Street Journal reported.

The river’s problems may only grow more challenging in the coming months, as the drought is expected to continue. The National Weather Service forecasts that dry conditions will persist in much of the river’s upper watershed through January.

Although the climate crisis is raising temperatures and making droughts more common and intense, a weather expert told The Associated Press that this latest drought affecting the central US is more likely a short-term weather phenomenon.

A prolonged issue in California, drought in the state has impacted both water supplies and increased wildfire risk and isn’t expected to get better. The AP notes that that the climate crisis is only “raising temperatures and making droughts more common and worse.”

“The drier areas are going to continue to get drier and the wetter areas are going to continue to get wetter,” Jen Brady, a data analyst at Climate Central, a nonprofit group of scientists and researchers that reports on climate change, told the outlet.