That morning the tide was at its lowest in recorded history. My dear friend was showing me around her lovely summer hometown of Olympia and the adjacent port town of Hoodsport.
How surprised she was to see that the water level had receded well beyond the docks. It was a far reach below the dock to the strangely exposed sand and the descent down the ladders. Vast areas of sand were exposed for first time in ages. The newly exposed sand was teeming with crabs, shrimp, clams, debris and litter. Perhaps this phenomenon is related to the feared climate change and global warming affecting this planet’s survival. How many recent and alarming occurrences there have been of record setting disasters striking around the world and here were signs of that phenomenon in Coastal Oregon in a small town with a sizable recreational port.
High and low tides, of course cause many problems and can reek havoc on an area. Navigation is difficult, coastal towns loose access to their port facilities. If the low tide lasts for a period of time, diseased and dead sea life may wash up on shore exposing residents to dangerous illness. There have been numerous reports of extreme tide levels in recent years. This is just another dire warning by mother nature of looming climate change and global warming, a factor that has been refuted over and over in contrast to the scientifically backed warnings that our time is shortened on this planet as life as we know it now. What is the difference causing high and low tides?
“High and low tide are caused by the gravitational forces between the earth and the moon. There are TWO high tides a day. The reason is, the part of the earth both AWAY from the moon, and CLOSE to the moon BOTH get high tides. The waters on the opposite side of the moon, since they are attracted less strongly than average, tend to ‘lag behind’ the rigid earth, and bulge AWAY from the moon, which in this case, is also AWAY from the earth, again, causing a high tide. LOW TIDES occurs at about right angles to the moon, where the force on the waters “”match the average pull of the moon on the earth closely.”
Source: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060802012507AAmnT0M
“The lowest known low tide in the recorded history of the Delaware River
estuary occurred on December 31, 1962. The primary cause for this low tide was
the strong, persistent wind from the northwest which resulted from a stationary
low-pressure area over Maine and the Maritime Provinces and a high-pressure
area over the Great Lakes. The direction of the wind, blowing downstream on
the Delaware Bay forced huge volumes of water out of the Delaware Bay and,
at the same time, lowered the ocean tide levels offshore along the coast of the
Atlantic Ocean; these effects combined to produce the lowest known low tide
in the Delaware estuary. The magnitude of this tide was particularly significant.
At the Chestnut Street pier, Philadelphia, Pa., where records have been
collected since 1899, the low tide of December 31, 1962 was 1.7 feet lower than the
previous minimum low tide.”
Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1586e/report.pdf
Such disasters continue. Perhaps the low tide in Hoodsport was an aberration (the normal flows were reached a few days after) but I view this as a strong warning of Mother Nature out of our control. How do we work together to prolong the life of Mother Earth?