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The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offers the following advisory
Select a region below to see when you may experience higher than normal tides from June-August 2017. Depending on non-tidal conditions (wind, storms, etc.) regions may experience impacts before or after the dates mentioned here.
NOTE: Higher than normal high tides alone do not necessarily cause coastal flooding. However, higher-than-normal high tides are becoming increasingly impactful due to continued sea level rise. High tide flooding that causes a nuisance along the coast (such as flooded streets, washed out beaches) is more likely to occur during these periods depending on your location along the coast. More severe flooding may result if adverse weather--heavy rains, strong wind, or big waves--conditions are present.
Questions answered for different regions:
When will the tides be higher than normal?
Where might I expect high tide flooding?
Why will they be higher than normal?
What kind of impact might I expect along the coast?
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 09 2017, @06:27PM (5 children)
I'm a little fuzzy on why this is that newsworthy, unless one is really into measuring tides.
Perigean spring tides [wikipedia.org] occur a few times each year. They may exaggerated a little more in summer due to water expansion with higher temperatures. But this is par for the course and happens on a regular basis. Here's NOAA's page [noaa.gov] explaining them in more depth.
Perhaps even more useful is NOAA's explanation of why they aren't generally newsworthy [noaa.gov]:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @07:15PM (3 children)
I wonder whether you noticed but it's a NOAA advisory the OP was referring to. :)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @02:59AM (2 children)
Of course I noticed. NOAA issues such advisories multiple times per year. It's like a "it will be hot today" advisory or a "strong winds today" advisory. The way this was presented here with the headline seems to imply this is unusual or should be read as having greater significance than a routine warning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @06:55AM (1 child)
Of course you did. But there is absolutely nothing speculative about how it was presented here, it's a word for word copy!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @02:39PM
The headline is NOT in the NOAA advisory. Also, the summary selected a bit out of the explanation concerning flooding. Again, why put that in a summary unless it's something you want to imply is an unusual concern (which it's not). When you have a headline saying "closer-than-normal" moon and "higher-than-normal" tides THIS SUMMER, it implies, well... that this is an unusual thing to happen in a given summer or in a given season... or something. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a headline.
Why not have a headline that says, "larger-than-normal moon will bring brighter-than-normal nights this summer"? Text: "Local observatory reports that there will be a phenomenon called a 'full moon' occurring on the following dates. Note that unusually bright nights may not necessarily occur; it could be cloudy during some of them."
Is that useful information? Sure. Is it worth a news headline? Probably not. Should the news headline read the way I just stated it? Probably not, because it implies that something ABNORMAL is happening.
To be clear, I have no problem with a story that presented a discussion on perigean spring tides, the background or theory behind them, scientific studies of them, heck -- even some of the other NOAA links I mentioned about them. But unless SN is going to start publishing weather reports on a regular basis, someone who reads this headline is likely to understand it as implying something different than what the NOAA link intended. (And, given what discussion actually resulted here, I'm not the only one who thought this implied something else.)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @01:36AM
What? More science? What is this place for? Where are all the political stories??