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The Daily Bucket - King Tides, December 2022 [1]

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Date: 2023-01-04

Bulkhead overtopped, ocean up to the beach house during an extreme King Tide last week

December 27, 2022

Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest

High tides are always higher in December than other times of the year but last month we had some exceptionally high tides in the Pacific Northwest. NOAA hasn’t yet officially confirmed our local numbers but a regional source reporting from Olympia said their December 27 high tide was the highest on record. I’ve never seen the tide as high as it was December 27 and I’ve lived here in the islands for 35 years.

Preliminary NOAA tide gauge data for the nearest gauge (Port Townsend) indicates that while the height of the tide was predicted to be higher on the December 26 King Tide, the water actually rose higher on Tuesday the 27th. Tide predictions are based on astronomical and bathymetric conditions but weather can affect what the water does.

According to the gauge data, the King Tide on the 27th was about two feet higher than predicted. TWO FEET!!

Predicted (blue) and actual (red) water levels for Port Townsend NOAA Tide Gauges

“King Tide” is an unofficial name given to extreme high tides, first popularized in Australia and New Zealand. In recent years it’s been used in North America as well, especially when astronomical factors are amplified by weather conditions. We’ve been hearing the term more often as these very high tides have begun causing damage on shorelines.

Astronomical factors for tides, and their dates creating the December 2022 King Tides, include —

the phase of the moon (full and new moons exert more gravitational pull on water because the moon and sun are in line, acting together): December 23 was a new moon

perigee (when the moon is closest to earth in its orbit) : December 24

perihelion (when the earth is closest to the sun in its orbit) : January 4

The confluence of all these factors was already telling us tides would be high at the end of December, what some of us call Solstice tides, but the weather had an additional huge impact. Last week a big storm rolled in off the ocean. It affected the tide in two ways —

strong southwest winds created a storm surge, pushing water toward Washington shorelines

the extreme low pressure at the center of this storm (28.9 mb) sat over western Washington on Tuesday. High pressure pushes down on water while low pressure allows it to rise up (sort of like what happens when you suck on a straw, creating low pressure in your mouth).

The combination of all these factors generated unprecedented high water a week ago. I went out to get photos and video from two nearby beaches. I’m also including comparison photos from a normal tide a week later, yesterday.

Barlow Bay

At the east end:

December 27

January 3. Those ecology blocks were installed to reinforce the road

At the west end:

This dock is where we keep our boat Elansa. Once the tide dropped, we saw that the high water had literally floated the shoreward structure, damaging it.

December 27. View from west

December 27. View from east

January 3. View from east. The dock’s deck and headwalk were designed half a century ago to be above the highest tides. Not the case anymore.

When the deck structure floated it pulled up the middle pilings a few inches, and broke loose from the outer pilings. The dock owners (including us) are considering possible ways to fix this, hopefully not too expensive. Red arrows show dislocations.

The following video has clips from several locations, including the tide gate across the road. Tide gates are one-way structures built to allow freshwater from the wetland and precipitation runoff to flow out into the bay through a culvert under the road, but prevent seawater from flowing into the wetland. This tide gate isn’t functioning properly. However, in the before time, ie before the road was built, this spot used to be a large brackish wetland, so this King Tide flow of seawater makes it somewhat more like its natural state.



🌊

Aleck Bay

Oceanic prevailing storm winds circle around the Olympic peninsula turning southeast as they approach the islands. Aleck bay faces SE so these kind of storms come straight up the bay like a wind tunnel, exacerbating wave action and bank erosion.

Looking southwest:

December 27

January 3

There’s a boat getting banged up by waves and loose driftwood that has created a horrible mess of loose garbage in this bay. It’s been there since December 10, after the incompetent owners ran it onto some nearby rocks and holed it, bringing it over to shore “for the time being”. We told the incompetents they’d better hire Vessel Assist right away to tow it to a marina where it could be taken out of the water for repair, or else the incoming storms would batter it to death. The incompetents said they had no money nor insurance on the boat but were “working on it”.

Sure enough, the inevitable series of winter storms blew in, and as luck would have it, the big King Tides storm. The boat has been breaking up since then, with its junky contents floating out, washing up onto the beach. We locals have been doing what we can to secure the junk. The county is currently trying to arrange removal of boat and flotsam through the state derelict boat program. At least the Coast Guard made sure the fuel was removed. As much as I can I’ve been picking up the most dangerous garbage, like entanglement hazards and hunks of styrofoam, but it’s been high tide most of the day making it hard to get to. Ugh. It’s horrible seeing all that crap polluting this beautiful bay.

Looking northeast:

December 27

December 30 at a medium tide, near sunset. Three days of King Tides battering had broken the exposed side completely open.

Video of clips taken December 27:



🌊

The reason we hear more about King Tides lately is because as sea level rises, these extreme high tides are a preview of what will be happening along coastlines as the norm. Roads being overtopped, shorelines chewed up, banks eroding, structures collapsing — these are occasional catastrophic events now, but it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing this kind of destruction on a frequent and regular basis. Sea level rise from global climate change in the Pacific Northwest is already documented and future effects have been predicted. If anything, we’ve been underestimating the rate of increase.

Extreme high tides over the past century:

The trend is increasingly higher high tides. I’ve added a bar representing the approx height of the December 27 high tide to the NOAA graph. Extreme Water Levels, Seattle. NOAA

January’s new moon will bring another series of King Tides, from January 22-24. If they coincide with another low pressure storm, look out shorelines.

💧

THE DAILY BUCKET IS A NATURE REFUGE. WE AMICABLY DISCUSS ANIMALS, WEATHER, CLIMATE, SOIL, PLANTS, WATERS AND NOTE LIFE’S PATTERNS. WE INVITE YOU TO NOTE WHAT YOU ARE SEEING AROUND YOU IN YOUR OWN PART OF THE WORLD, AND TO SHARE YOUR OBSERVATIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE DAILY BUCKET FEATURE, CHECK OUT THIS DIARY: DAILY BUCKET PHENOLOGY: 11 YEARS OF RECORDING EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/4/2145018/-The-Daily-Bucket-King-Tides-December-2022

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