a flood watch. causing a crisis or about to. reynolds wolf is in the extreme weather center. that s a lot of ground to cover. certainly a huge mess for those folks. looks like the worse is going to be picking up in places downstream, in parts of the mississippi valley. let s back up and show you what we have in terms of just some of the satellite footage. this really tells the story of what s been happening. first and foremost, go back in time to april 29th of 2010, you see how things normally look on the mississippi river. this is not a draught situation, not flooding, this is how it s expected. look at the recent photos we go to april 29th of 2011, things beginning to build up along the mississippi. as we zoom in towards i could roshgs the water of the mississippi river spilling its banks cutting off through parts of the floodways, parts of the lakes and meandering portions of the mississippi river filled up. same due west of cairo. the problem we re going to be dealing with, m
watches or warnings. you see what it looks like. it stretches throughout the entire country s midsection from the upper midwest all the way down to the gulf of mexico. thousands of people in homes are threatened. everywhere you look, you see blue rivers flowing over levees, evacuations being ordered or the floodwaters, as we said, potentially, could hit. they seem more like lakes, almost, when we see these reporters and the live shots, there is not a river flowing behind them but massive water. rob marciano looked like he was standing on the shore of the lake. reynolds is with us following this in the extreme weather center. you guys are right. you touched on something. if you are not used to seeing that area, it does have a serene appearance where rob was the other days ayou mentioned. we are going to go back in time and give you an idea of how things look forward and how they look now and what we can expect in days to come. april 29th of 2010, here is the mississippi valley,