Monday, November 14, 2005
September and Tides
I’ve become a man of the tides…it is a wonderful thing that as a landlocked citizen I have never really been exposed to. The saying goes, “..as constant as the tides…” and I’m still trying to figure out what that means because they aren’t really constant—at least on a daily basis. Right, they have them mapped out and I can find out what time the high tide will be tomorrow and what height it will be—but other than that—it is just a neat phenomenon…
If you arrived here and saw the lagoon at low tide, it would resemble a dried up lake—like someone pulled the plug. When the tide comes in—and I’ve done my research with a neighbor as we sat on his jetty measuring against a post—it comes in approximately 1cm every 6 minutes. That is filling a massive body of water at an incredible rate!
I sound like Bill Nye the Science Guy…
September is “supertide” month—the equinox tide is supposed to take place. This is a time when the tide is the highest (2.8 msl) and the lowest (.8 msl) with variance of 2 meters! It really happened in November but the pictures are nonetheless impressive.
The drama on the island is that all the homes are placed at 3.1 msl (mean sea level)—that is 3.1 meters…When the tide comes in it—it is only 300 mm (less than 18”) from flooding—no worries—its been designed that way…
Anything affects the tides. The moon, the planets, low barometric pressure, weather, wind…and I have no control over any of it. God is an awesome God and this universe really declares the danger, beauty, and magnitude of the systems He has set in place. They say that if the moon was just a fraction closer, the high tides would cover all the land…evolution—shmevolution…
