What Causes The Stunning Mississippi River Rip?

The Mississippi River is quite the record-breaker itself. According to Britannica, it's one of North America's longest rivers, stretching for 3,766 kilometers (2,340 miles). From Minnesota's Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, it runs through the nation and the nation's history.

The Mississippi River is quite the record-breaker itself. According to Britannica, it's one of North America's longest rivers, stretching for 3,766 kilometers (2,340 miles). From Minnesota's Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, it runs through the nation and the nation's history.

What's even more interesting than this, though, is what happens at the river's delta. As the United States Environmental Protection Agency reports, a total of 31 different states' water drains into the Mississippi along its long and meandering route. Among all this water, naturally, is a wide range of nutrients, chemicals, and other elements that are flushed out at the other end.

Over time, we've built on and around the river to suit our own ends (as is humanity's wont, of course), which has further exacerbated this. The result has been that the Gulf of Mexico dead zone (an area with less oxygen in the water due to pollution and other factors) is one of the planet's very biggest, according to the National Ocean Service.

This, then, is the Mississippi River rip: an intriguing phenomenon in which, per Jacksonville, oncoming water from the river and the Gulf of Mexico's water look very different and fail to mix together.

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