How deep on average is the Illinois river? How deep is the deepest spot on the Illinois river?

Question

What about the Mississippi river? Is it alot deeper than the Illinois? I live between both rivers and was just curious.

Answer 1

How deep is it?

Like the Mississippi River, the Illinois River is relatively shallow. To make it navigable, it is dredged to create and maintain a nine foot deep channel.  The mean annual flow of the Illinois River at Valley City (61 miles upstream from the river mouth) is 22,560 ft3/s (cubic feet per second), and the mean annual flow from the upper Illinois River to the lower Illinois River is 12,580 ft3/s. The Illinois River is a navigable link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. Water depth in the channel is maintained by three dams in the basin and four dams upstream from the basin.

Depth: At its headwaters, the Mississippi is less than 3 feet deep. The river's deepest section is betweenGovernor Nicholls Wharf and Algiers Point in New Orleans where it is 200 feet deep.

Answer 2

The average depth along the Illinois River is about 23 feet.  This level is artificially maintained by a series of dams and basins along the river.  It's reported that a depth of over 60 feet has been record in one of these basin areas and is most likely the deepest part of the Illinois River.

A number of canals make the Illinois commercial navigable from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River.

What's amazing about the Mississippi is that at its head waters the depth is around three feet, but as it passes through New Orleans it reaches depths of 200 feet!

Odd little tidbit:  Geologists think the Illinois river was formed in a matter of days when the Wisconsin Glacier went through a rapid melt off 10,000 years ago!

Pretty cool....

Answer 3

That kind of data varies.  I live in an area that floods a lot.  You can get real time information on this site, once you locate the water station(s) you're interested in.