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Ice closes upper Mississippi river shipping early


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#1 CNJRoss

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Posted 23 November 2014 - 07:56 PM

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN, 11/21:

Ice brings early closure to river shipping
Icy conditions force a halt to Upper Mississippi’s difficult season.


Icy conditions on the Upper Mississippi River have put an end to the 2014 shipping season, the earliest closing in the past 45 years.

With the towboat Mary K. Cavarra and its load of four barges heading south through Lock & Dam No. 2 at Hastings on Thursday, the season officially came to a close, putting a bookend on a choppy year that began last spring with the second-latest opening and came to a 26-day halt in midsummer so crews could clear flood-borne silt from the navigation channel.

SNIP

Minnesota’s corn harvest, forecast at 1.29 billion bushels, has been completed, and all but a small percentage of the state’s estimated 305 million bushels of soybeans have been picked, Zelenka said. But the river’s early closure means finding alternative ways to get those crops to New Orleans and foreign export markets. Half the state’s agricultural exports are shipped on the Mississippi River.

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