WARM AIR FROM GULF AND PACIFIC BRINGING WARMER WEATHER TO AREA

Unseasonably warm temperatures were expected to continue throughout Southeast Missouri this week, with only slightly cooler weather by Sunday.

Today's forecast calls for sunny skies with highs around 60. Mild conditions are predicted into Saturday, with highs to near 70.

Temperatures were expected to cool a bit by Sunday, with lows in the 30s and highs in the 40s.

"We're getting warm air from two fronts: the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific," said Dr. Al Robertson, climatologist at Southeast Missouri State University.

Robertson explained the weather happenings which have seen temperatures climb from an 8-below reading Sunday morning to a near 50-degree reading three days later.

"Two things have happened," he said. "One is that the high-pressure cold dome has scooted to the east. Wind directions around the high=-pressure dome are clockwise and started pumping in warm air."

The second thing, said Robertson, is the jet stream, which was down in Louisiana last weekend. "It moved north when the pressure dome moved east, giving us the two sources of heat."

Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Office at Paducah, Ky., reported the upper Mississippi River from Cairo, Ill., to Cape Girardeau remained closed to vessel traffic due to severe ice conditions.

The river north of Cape Girardeau to St. Louis was reopened Wednesday.

With the warmer weather, the stalled ice on the upper Mississippi has started to move downstream but ice gorges remain along both banks.

The Mississippi at Cape Girardeau has experienced a 6-foot rise over the past few days, from 16 feet Monday to more than 22 feet Wednesday.

The forecast for the river calls for another 2-foot rise by Saturday, to 23.1 feet today, 23.7 feet Friday and 24.3 feet Saturday, still about 8 feet from flood stage Cape Girardeau, which is 32 feet.

Eagle-watchers could have had a field day watching ice floes move downstream Wednesday. Three bald eagles were spotted on the ice, and two were spotted on the Illinois side of the river across from the Broadway Street floodgate.

The safety office at Paducah has dispatched two harbor patrol teams to the Cairo, Thebes and Cape Girardeau area to provide on-scene assessments of the ice developments.

Coast Guard and civilian crews worked together searching for as many as 20 barges floating free in the ice choked, 60-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Cairo and Cape Girardeau. Officials were trying to determine how many barges broke loose in the Cape Girardeau area Tuesday night.

"We found and corralled a few of the barges, but there are still several of them out there," said Lt. Mark Emmons of the Coast Guard in Paducah.

A Coast Guard helicopter has been dispatched to the scene from New Orleans.

"We'll be making flights in the area Thursday," said Emmons. "We hope to account for all of the runaway barges. We had reports of up to possibly 20 loose barges."

A total of 43 barges broke away from a fleet at Gray's Point, Mo., earlier this week but were rounded up by their owners Tuesday.