The Washington King Tide Initiative is entering its third year, and state officials would like people to shoot photographs of flooded roads, yards and buildings — if such events occur.
Photo by Meegan M. Reid, Kitsap Sun
High tides are expected to continue for the next few days and return to high levels again in mid-January. Whether flooding occurs at any one place depends on rainfall, winds and atmospheric pressure, as well as tidal levels dictated by the position of the moon and sun. (See NOAA Ocean Service Education.)
Not much flooding occurred during king tides last year, but plenty of photographs were collected in early 2010. That’s when the picture on this page was taken in Gorst between Bremerton and Port Orchard. For additional photos, check out the Flickr page or the video slide show put together by the Washington Department of Ecology.
Taking note of these high tides is one way to gauge how climate change may affect shoreline areas. Over the next 100 years, sea level is expected to rise by at least 2.6 feet, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, although previous estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were in the range of 7 inches to 2 feet.
The King Tide Initiative started in Australia in 2009, according to Ecology’s website on King Tides, but it soon became a project for the West Coast of North America, with Washington and British Columbia joining in 2010 and Oregon and California joining in 2011.
Visit Flickr pages for British Columbia, Oregon and California, which includes regional pages for San Francisco Bay, Santa Monica and San Diego.
For a list of high tides, go to Ecology’s King Tide Schedule page and click on the map. More precise information can be found on NOAA’s page of tide predictions, where you can zoom in to your area of interest.
For past King Tide events, check out my Water Ways entries for Jan. 21, 2011 and Feb. 1, 2010.
