Every snowstorm and every rain event that occurs in the Missouri Basin between now and next spring will increase the odds that the Missouri River will flood in 2020.
National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Fuchs recently noted that the Missouri Basin can expect a wetter-than-normal winter. He also stated that the soils in the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains are either saturated or nearing saturation. Fuchs fears that once those soils freeze solid, all the moisture presently lying atop the land, stored beneath it, or yet to accumulate on it, will lie in wait till the spring thaw. And if that thaw comes in a hurry, like it did this past March, then the Missouri is likely to bound out of its banks again, with potentially catastrophic consequences for those living in the valley south of Sioux City. Continue Reading »
Although North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho signed the Paris Peace Accords in January, 1973, he and his colleagues on the North Vietnamese Politburo remained committed to toppling the Saigon regime. Evidence of Hanoi’s intentions toward South Vietnam were not hard to discern – they were easily visible across the South Vietnamese landscape. 
George Packer’s Our Man is occasionally insightful, at times gossipy, and nearly always disturbing.
At the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Missouri River south of today’s Sioux City, Iowa, possessed a series of long, graceful bends and a relatively deep, narrow, main channel. But by the mid-nineteenth century, that meandering river began to disappear, replaced by an altogether different kind of river.
In August 1965, while General William C. Westmoreland’s finalized the details of his ground war strategy, 700 skytroopers from the 1st Cavalry Division disembarked from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Boxer at the port of Qui Nhon, South Vietnam. At the time, international military analysts considered the 1st Cavalry (whose troopers called themselves the “First Team”) to be the most technologically sophisticated ground combat unit in the world. The 1st Cavalry’s large contingent of helicopters, including the new UH-1 Huey and twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook, provided the skytroopers unprecedented mobility; and in modern warfare, mobility translated into killing power. 
