Posted on 27 April 2011 at 10:39h

The sun is shining and I don't have second year classes any more so thoughts turn to the summer holidays which hopefully means climbing and surfing. No surfing in the fjord so I go to magic seaweed to check out some videos and found this one about surfing a tidal bore in Indonesia. A tidal bore happens when there is resonance between the force of gravity from the moon pushing up the tide and the velocity of a wave in a body of water. There is a famous one in Britain called the Severn bore which is particularly big on a spring tide. The one in the video is rather more impressive than this one and even forms a barrel.

The photograph shows an interesting phenomenon. There seems to be two waves, one travelling down and the other diagonally, watch the video and you'll see what I mean. Also in the video you get a nice shot of the wave refracting as it passes over a sandbank and starts to slow down. The water doesn't look very clean though, chocolate barrels don't sound very inviting.