Soon, we will all live underwater thanks to the mighty king tide! "Soon" being a relative term, of course. Today and tomorrow, the waterways around the city will be swollen to about two feet higher than their normal level, thanks to a rare all-natural phenomenon known as a king tide.
The tide will be large enough to cover the steps at the base of the Manhattan Bridge and splash the new pedestrian esplanade along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, writes the Times. Scientists are urging everyday people to document the king tide and, next week, the normal tide, and send pictures their way. The reason? “What we’re seeing Wednesday and Thursday is probably what we normally will be seeing by 2080,” explained an ecologist with the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program.
Is Gotham on the way to becoming the next Atlantis? An official in the mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability says that the sea level in New York has been rising about an inch per decade over the past 100 years, due to natural geologic processes. So, maybe! “It’s not just two feet of water—it’s when you start to see the compounded impacts of higher sea levels with storms,” he explained.
For extreme-weather watchers, the piers at Battery Park are recommended as a viewing point for the "extreme" waves—you can check high tides times here, and send your photos to habitat@harborestuary.org.
