GRAND TOWER, Ill. — Tourists in 2022 flocked to Southern Missouri for what they thought would be a "once-in-a-lifetime" tourist destination. As of Wednesday morning, Tower Rock reemerged from the depths of the Mississippi River for the third year in a row.
The aptly named towering rock formation usually sits isolated in the Mississippi River around 100 miles south of St. Louis. It's normally separated from the bank of the river, but low water levels in 2022 exposed a rock walkway to the destination.
Mississippi River levels at Chester, Illinois, dipped below 1.5 feet early Sunday morning, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Water Prediction Service. Once water levels dip that low, the path to Tower Rock washes up.
Editor's note: The above video originally aired during a 2022 broadcast.
5 On Your Side was warned in 2022 about this "once-in-a-lifetime" event becoming all too common by then-American Rivers representative Olivia Dorothy. She said annual low river levels are something Missourians and all residents along the Mississippi should get accustomed to as human-induced climate change through the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas make these conditions more common.
“This is the new normal,” Dorothy said in 2022. “Climate models have predicted that this region will shift to being prone to very long and dramatic droughts that will be punctuated by extreme fluctuation and flooding.”