Whatever else this year’s Missouri River 340 brings, two things are already locked in before the first paddle ever touches water Tuesday: it’s going to be brutally hot, and the river itself is running lower than normal for the date.
The heat
ABC 17’s Stormtrack Weather Team issued a Weather Alert Day for Sunday and Monday — race check-in and the eve of the Tuesday start — with highs in the lower-to-mid 90s and heat index values near 105 degrees or higher, driven by high pressure building over the Plains and shifting east with more moisture in the air. Statewide, Missourinet reports heat index values approaching 110 in spots this week. That’s the stretch when solo paddlers are grinding through their first 24 hours without sleep, under a sun with nowhere to hide on an open river.
Race organizers already build for this. Safety boats — the same fleet that runs the Reaper cutoff boat — patrol the course specifically watching for heat exhaustion alongside hypothermia and equipment failure, according to mr340.org. If you’re paddling, or crewing for someone who is, that’s the takeaway: hydrate before you’re thirsty, and know that pulling over for shade isn’t quitting, it’s pacing.
The river
Meanwhile, the water underneath all those boats is unusually low for late July. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ most recent monthly runoff forecast — dated July 1 — puts 2026 calendar-year runoff above Sioux City at roughly 15.5 million acre-feet, about 60% of the 1898-2025 average, one of the driest years on record for the basin. The Corps manages that shortfall by conserving water at its upstream reservoirs, which means less water moving downstream to us than a normal year would send.
Here at home, our own river gauge at Boonville was reading a steady 7.56 feet and 43,700 cubic feet per second as of Friday morning, holding well below flood stage with no rise expected. A lower, slower river cuts both ways for the race: less current means less “free” downstream push for tired paddlers, but it also tends to expose more sandbars and submerged snags than paddlers might be used to from a wetter year — reason enough to trust the marked channel over shortcuts, especially at night.
Why it matters here
None of this changes anything about Tuesday’s start at Kaw Point, but it matters for anyone on our stretch of the river this week — whether you’re one of the 600-plus racers due to reach the Katfish Katy’s checkpoint by Thursday, part of a ground crew meeting them at a landing, or just planning to watch from the bluffs. Bring more water than you think you need, plan around the hottest part of each afternoon, and don’t count on the current to do a tired paddler’s work for them this year.
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