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  Saturday, June 25, 2005


Turnagain Arm is home to the only Tidal Bore found in the U.S. And "What is a Tidal Bore?", you ask. Well, here's the scoop:

A tidal bore is a wave generated by a sudden influx of water rushing in to an estuary following low tide. The prime ingredient for a tidal bore is a coastal tide range in excess of twelve feet. Turnagain Arm's extreme tides are over 39 feet, the second largest range in the world after the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.
So, there's a category of geocaches called earthcaches.

An Earthcache is a special place that people can visit to learn about a unique geoscience feature or aspect of our Earth.
You can see where this is headed - there just happens to be a bore tide geocache: Turnagain Arm Tidal Bore Earthcache.

I've seen two big bore tides - both when I was a kid. Just a huge very straight, very long, big wave that runs across from one side of Turnagain Arm to other. It is an extremely impressive site. Big bore tides don't happen very often - the stars (or at least the moon) have to be aligned just so: The high tide needs to be very high, the low tide needs to be very low, and there needs to be a very strong wind blowing from South to North against the incoming tide.

Mom, the Ski Boy and I carefully persued the Bore Tide Table and decided that Thursday June 23rd looked good. One of the biggest tide differentials of the year.

Thursday after work the three of us headed down Turnagain Arm in Hubert. It was a gorgeous evening - warm and sunny. Hot even. Which in the bore tide world is not a good thing. If it's hot, the wind is not blowing. And the wind is a key ingredient. sigh...

We decided that Bird Point would be the best spot to hunt the wily bore tide. The Arm is relatively narrow at Bird Point and the view is spectacular. We arrived at the Point about 20 minutes prior to the scheduled arrival of the bore. To this day, I am still amazed that we can predict to the minute when the tide will arrive. Just like a train - only more reliable.

We weren't the only ones awaiting the bore tide - there were a ton of tourists. Evidently this is a big tourist deal. Who knew??

The tide was scheduled to arrive at 6:24 PM. At about 6:18 PM, we could see it coming. It was a white straight line that crossed the entire Arm. And it just kept coming straight towards us. At 6:24 PM, it was abreast of the Point. The geography of the area broke the tide up out of its straight line. But it was still quite clearly delineated.

That part was very cool. But our bore tide was a wee tide in height - 6 inches if it was lucky. Certainly not the massive display of nature we'd hoped for. More of a nano display of nature. Most of the tourists were somewhat disappointed. But it just wasn't windy enough to create a monster.

But that's o.k. The weather was gorgeous and we had a great time!

Me with my GPS and the bore tide in the background. The bore has broken up - the very small curved bit in the background is the part of its remenants.




Here's a more of a closeup of the tide at the point - not very impressive. It would have been really nifty to have been able to get a really good picture of entire tide before it arrived. However, one needed to have a monster telephoto lens to get that shot. Which many of the tourists were equiped with. I was jealous.


11:59:41 PM    comment []



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