If there is one natural event that defines how we live down here in Toddville, unquestionably that event is our tides. To most people, tides are the natural cycle of rising and falling waters that follow a predictable, roughly six to eight hour cycle and are strongest during a full moon. Spend some time down here in Toddville, and you will learn tides are everything except predictable.
When we first moved here, Keith and I tried to learn all we could about the tides. To our surprise, the watermen born and raised here knew as much about the tides as we do. That fact didn't strike us as any more odd than the number of watermen down here who don't know how to swim. We decided we had to learn about the tides ourselves.
Here's what we know: tides come in and they go out. How far they come in and how far they go out can be explained only after they've done their cycle. In general, fall and spring tides are the highest and always peak during a full moon cycle. They also peak during the new moon cycle, but not at the level of a full moon cycle. And they don't necessarily peak at the times listed on the tide tables. Wind speed, direction, and duration plays a key role.
We're in the middle of our spring tides. With two exceptions, each lasting about a week or less, we haven't had our spring tides. The past two springs, the short way out of Toddville was flooded from about the middle to end of March until about the end of May. Last year, the spring tides persisted until July. We have since learned the long spring tide cycle was due to strong currents out in the Atlantic that affected tides all up and down the East Coast. This year, we haven't had the spring tides. Two coastal storms brought in the tides for a few days, but the normal spring tides lasting several weeks have been nonexistent.
In fact, by April 16th, we had no spring tides. The tides were actually running below normal, almost like winter tides. (Winter tides are our lowest.) On April 16th, a strong coastal storm moved through, bringing strong easterly winds from Friday night through Saturday night. We had no doubt we were in for a strong tide, but because the tides were running so low prior to the storm, we weren't worried about our house flooding.
The morning tide was a flood tide, but one of the normal spring nuisance tides. Keith and I left for town to do some shopping and were gone for most of the day. When we returned, what should have been our low tide was still a near flood tide. Those persistent, strong easterly winds never let the water flow out to the Bay.
Around eleven-thirty at night, the winds calmed to a dead still. We saw no sign of flooding and peak high tide was only an hour and a half away. We felt sure that we were safe from flooding. The two hours before peak high tide and the two hours after peak high tide are the critical times. The winds were calm and no sign of flooding meant we had to be safe.
About one in the morning, the peak high tide time, I let the dogs out and there still was no sign of flooding. The dogs and I came back in (we go out with the dogs because Kiwi is high on the owls' menu list) and I confidently told Keith we had nothing to worry about with possible flooding.
An hour and a half later, I looked outside. Water surrounded our house and was rising fast. It came, literally, within a hair's breadth of breaching our front door threshold. Unfortunately, where the original house joins the extension added in the seventies sits a little lower than our front door and water began seeping through.
Since it was nighttime, we can't say for sure how extensive this flooding was. Judging by what we could see, we reckon this flood was worse than the Mother's Day flood of '08. After that flood, we did some changes in our yard to allow the water to run more freely and obviously that helped on this flood. Instead of the whole bottom floor of the original part of the house suffering water damage, only a small part in the living room received water damage this time around.
We're back to redesigning the yard a bit. Flood insurance will help us raise the low part of the house where it joins the extension. Maybe the next tidal flood will just flow on by our house without incidence - at least to the house. Our gardens suffered under the salt water inundation. One thing we all agree on down here: the tides will go wherever and whenever they damned well please and there's no stopping them. All we can do is mitigate the damage.
Oh, and now we understand why the watermen born and raised down here don't understand the tides. The tides have a mind of their own and just when you think you understand them, they go and do something different.
© 2008
Mark Darien
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