I've had a busy few days filming new episodes for our Bay of Fundy Travel Show on YouTube. One of the sites filmed this week was Reversing Falls in the Fundy city of Saint John, New Brunswick.Now i have to confess, I really don't think I fully appreciated what was going on here 'tide wise' until I hung around for 2 days. A lot of folks who visit Reversing Falls expect Niagara Falls going backwards....well, this isn't the case, of course! But the phenomenon is still really cool.
Basically what you've got here is three very different things going on at various times in the tide cycle: LOW tide: St John River flows out into Bay >> view rapids
SLACK tide: when the Fundy tide height and the river height are the same for about 20 min between high & low (and low & high) >> view dead calm water
HIGH tide: when Fundy's tides keep coming in and are higher than the river (and continue to flow another 100 kms upriver!!) >> view rapids in a different direction than the low tide rapids
The fact that the river (and its rapids) change direction is the 'reversing' part. The 'falls' part is actually happening sub-surface. There are massive waterfalls down there in undersea geology that cause crazy rapids on the surface! These rapids may look fairly calm from the viewing decks but they are HUGE and crazy when you are in them, like I was this week on Reversing Falls Jet Boat Tours (see picture!!).
Hope to have our YouTube episode for Reversing Falls next month!
We visited the Reversing Falls on Oct. 11th.2011 (Carnival Glory cruisers) -and was underwhelmed.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm back home and checking this amazing phenomenon out, I fully appreciate the freaky thing it is!
I now realize that when we were there, the water was surging inland.
Would love to spend 2 days there, as your comment suggests, to appreciate the complete tidal comings and goings of massive amounts of water, as they squeeze through this choke-point between two huge bodies of water!
It was GOOGLE EARTH -just last night- that has revealed for me the immensity of it all.