Oh well it is Friday 13th so here is some news about some more bad luck which has befallen the Thai people.
There have been a lot of floods in Thailand in the last couple of months and now according to the Bangkok Post there are fears that Bangkok itself (which is already suffering from flooding) may suffer disastrous flooding on a scale even greater than the floods which submerged the city in 1995. This is partially because because residents in upstream provinces have opposed the diversion of run-off from the river into the vast fields along its route.
There has not been any increase in the amount of rain this year but it has fallen in different parts of the country. Last year's rain was concentrated mostly in the upper North, and the water run-off was stored by major dams. This year's rain mainly fell south of the dams without the benefit of the reservoirs holding it in.
Apparently a key obstacle to the city's flood drainage attempts is the high tide period. During the three-day high tide, the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) has asked the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) not to discharge water from the city into the Chao Phraya.
I must learn more about the tides in Thailand if they have a three day high tide - it is hard to imagine what that might do here in attempts to protect the east coast and London from flooding.
Despite the violence in the south, the floods and the coup we are still planning to travel to Thailand early next year and I may blog a bit over the next couple of weeks about Koh Samui in an attempt to encourage others to visit Thailand for themselves.
2 comments:
Havent the poor people of Thailand suffered enough?
Once a month we have very high/low tides over a two day period when they are at their maximun .... we alsways used to hope our holiday conincided with that so we got the benefit of the sand exposed at low tide and the fun of dodging waves at high tide.
http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/03-04/marine/res_resourcebkd.htm#spring
Has some explanations of tides, how they work and how they are affected by currents.
If you go here
http://www.climbers-club.co.uk/tides/tides.html
and put in Padstow for the sake of argument - and look at the height of the tides you will notice a three day peak - this might be the effect that they are reffering to.
http://www.myforecast.com/bin/tide.m?city=75672&metric=true&tideLocationID=T0138
has some of the Tide Tables for Thailand - not sure that this is the time scale you need.
Feel free to edit as necessary !
Thanks for all that - I shall go and have a look. I had not realised that UK tides followed a similar pattern of highs and lows hecne my puzzlement
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