1/18/19
Sunday night will bring what is called a super blood wolf moon, the last lunar eclipse of the decade.
The king tides will occur Sunday and Monday and Arcata is urging local residents to take pictures of areas around the bay as the king tides move in an effort to document the water level at high tide.
“The initiative is to get people thinking about what the high tide will look like in the coming years as the ocean rises,” said Jennifer Kalt, director of Humboldt Baykeeper. “Humboldt Bay is experiencing twice the rate of sea level rise as the rest of the state and Jay Patton and his fellow geologists at Cascadia GeoSciences have found that the ground beneath the Humboldt Bay area is sinking due to tectonic subsidence at the same rate that sea level is rising — meaning that this area has twice the rate of relative sea level rise as the state average. Conversely, the coast in the Crescent City area is uplifting due to tectonic activity at the same rate as sea level rise — meaning that there, the rate of relative sea level is essentially zero.”
Kalt said the goal is to document the high tides so that future planning can be geared toward the rise of ocean levels and for low-lying areas in Arcata and the county that will mean impacts to wastewater treatment plants and where to build future public infrastructure.
“We need to raise people’s awareness and we need to plan for this because it’s going to happen,” Kalt said. “It will only be disastrous if we fail to plan. We built all these dikes 100 years ago and now the bay is 18 inches higher and if we’re going to spend public money to upgrade wastewater treatment we should start thinking about moving them. Both Eureka and Arcata are looking at $40-to-$50 million upgrades, but where are they going to move to?”
