Thursday, December 6, 2007

Why we love really really low tides...

Last week we had a series of what we call "minus tides." A minus tide is a low tide that reads as a negative number on the tide charts because the water level is below the reference point, the "Mean Lower Low Water." MLLW is defined as the average of the lower low water height of each tidal day observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch. The previous Epochs were 1960-1978 and 1983-2001, pretty large aggregates of data. Hmm, maybe my "number of Scripps Pier pilings whose bases are exposed" is a simpler measure! At any rate, we were having 14 pairs out of the water, so the tide was about as low as it ever gets here. And the point is ... the frisbee playing is superb!




And best of all, we can look forward to these evening low tides again over the Christmas week!

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