January sensations revised
(I discovered too late that my previous version needed some weeding at the end. This has been cleaned up. Apologies.)
January is a first-class month here (I’ll let you know if I think of one that isn’t).
Nothing against gray. Gray can also be beautiful here, often more beautiful than blue.I say this for two reasons. First, the end of the month — or more or less starting now — is composed of the so-called “giorni della merla,” or days of the blackbird. Specifically, the female blackbird, which isn’t black at all, but never mind, and who is commonly believed to be busy building her nest right now for her imminent new brood. This is the only intimation, however remote, of the eventual coming warmth.
Gray actually has a lot of points in its favor.This designation isn’t limited to Venice; our little interlude goes by the same name all over Italy. This brief span of days — specifically the last three of the month — are famous for being really cold; in fact, they used to be fairly dependably the coldest of the winter. Perhaps they’re not as cold now as they may once have been (though they’re plenty cold just the same), but if we didn’t get a sudden drop in temperature in late January I would be extremely upset. Just so you know.
Those more inclined toward literature than ecology may recall that this frigid period strikes just about on St. Agnes’ Eve, or January 20. John Keats’s eponymous poem, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” sets the mood:
“St. Agnes Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl for all his feathers was a-cold; / The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass / And silent was the flock in woolly fold: / Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told / His rosary…” And so on. Odd that I can still remember that from high school.
Unless you don’t like humidity, in which case gray is not your color.So “days of the blackbird” is just a more attractive way of saying “cold snap,” though at the moment we’re in more of a gray snap. Between fog, snow sputters, and generally heavy overcast, the only light on the horizon is the dimly perceptible gleam of Carnival — a gleam not caused by the sun so much as by merchants’ smiles glinting off loose change.
The second reason I love January leads me to ask: Have you ever wondered where all the water of the acqua alta goes when the tide turns? There is a phenomenon which is particularly Venetian and again, I notice, dedicated to a female figure. In these few weeks, when the water gets let out of the lagoon it reveals the “seche de la marantega barola” (SEKK-eh deh la mah-RAN-tega ba-RO-la), or the exposed mudbanks of the shriveled old hag. The Befana, they mean, even though she went home two weeks ago.
I suppose they could have called them the seche of St. Agnes, but it just isn’t the same. From what I gather, it would have to have been rendered as the “exposed mudbanks of the young virgin martyr.” Not bad, but still.
The lagoon is particularly beautiful in two ways when the year begins. First, with real cold, the water becomes utterly pellucid. Peering down from the bridge over our canal, I can easily make out all sorts of debris in perfect detail, down to the number on a lost license plate settling into the mud. Out in the lagoon, the water has an amazing Caribbean/Greek island transparency.
Second, and just as beautiful as the water, is what you see when the water goes away. The “seche de la barola” are startling prairies of luxuriant emerald algae emerging from the shallows, replacing the usual water with verdant swathes worthy of Nebraska.
I love this, not only because it’s so strange (the first time, anyway), but because it shows in one of countless ways how alive the lagoon is. As the late-January twilight briefly weaves itself into the fading sky with soft skeins of mist, the tide silently turns and this extravagant greensward begins to imperceptibly sink beneath the water again. Imperceptible to me, perhaps, but not to the feeding waterbirds tiptoeing delicately among the soggy tussocks, seeking one last little morsel.
In the city, you may notice that the boats are very low at their moorings. One year I even saw boats sitting on bare mud along the shores of the Grand Canal. That was exciting. It was like being in Fowey, or one of those other little ports in Cornwall where the tide leaves fleets of pleasure boats sprawled yards and yards from the water’s edge.
Oddly, this low tide happened at dawn in June a few years ago, rather than dusk in January. But you get the idea.The seche de la barola are well-known to the municipal tide office, which publishes the daily tide predictions on its website and also in the Gazzettino. One symptom of how the tides have gone haywire in general this winter isn’t so much (to my mind) the high water, though that makes such entertaining pictures. It was how the anticipated low tides refused to go low. They just refused. You can see it here:
The lower line indicates the previously forecast high and low tide levels. The upper line traces what is really happening. Quite a difference. And this went on for days.To give you an idea of what I mean by “low,” here are some numbers on the seche a year ago.
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Istituzione Centro Previsioni e Segnalazioni Maree |
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Minimi di marea <-50 cm Punta della Salute – anno 2009 |
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Estremali <-50 cm |
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N ° |
Data |
Ora solare |
Valore |
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1 |
09-Jan-09 |
16.20 |
-52 |
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2 |
10-Jan-09 |
16.35 |
-57 |
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3 |
11-Jan-09 |
17.25 |
-58 |
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4 |
12-Jan-09 |
18.05 |
-59 |
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Minus 59 centimeters is 23 inches below the median sea level. Just so you know.
So come visit sometime in January, and see what the Befana left behind. She’ll be back next year to do it all over again.
Holiday high water
The big present everybody got this year was acqua alta. It seems to have been reported fairly extensively in the world at large — not that people elsewhere don’t have enough drama of their own to keep up with — but there appears to be enough inherent drama, or diversion, in the phenomenon to attract attention.
And they’re predicting more for today, New Year’s Eve, and also Day. Happily, these tides will peak at a decent hour, between 9:00 and 10:00 AM, so we can get some sleep. Thoughtful of them.
We spent most of Christmas Eve night listening, not for the reindeer hooves on the roof, but for the wind to veer around from the southeast to anywhere else it felt like going (or coming). But the forecasts (regular weather as well as high-water categories), which we consulted about every ten minutes, were implacable: There was going to be a strong scirocco (shih-RAWK-oh), and that meant that we were essentially destined to have “water on the ground,” as the Venetians call it in its more modest form.
The scirocco’s force pushes against the lagoon and prevents (or severely slows, but I’m going with prevents) the tide from going out in its normal way and even exacerbates the subsequent normal rising tide. The weather report specifies the direction and strength of the wind, but all we need to do is open the front door and listen: A strong scirocco causes heavy surf which in turn make a low, smooth roar, something like a distant jet preparing to taxi for take-off. And we can easily hear it, out there toward the left, where the Lido’s slim line of beach is doing what it can to keep the Adriatic where it belongs.
The city’s Tide Center was predicting that the maximum height, at 4:30 AM, Christmas Morning, would be 150 cm [59 inches, or almost five feet] above average sea level. I will explain the intricacies of these measurements and their meaning in the real world on another occasion, though let me just note here that Venice does not sit precisely at sea level, but at various heights above it, so these numbers are not immediately as dramatic as they sound.
As the Tide Center explains on its website, “97 percent of the city is at about 100 cm above the average sea level. This means that the amount of water that could invade the city is always well below the maximum number predicted. For example, an exceptional tide of 140 cm corresponds in reality to about 60 cm [23 inches] in the lowest points of the city (Piazza San Marco).”
I don’t know how high our domicile happens to sit above the average sea level, but we knew that at 150 cm there would be water coming over our top step and into our house. It’s just a little hovel, true, but it’s not a boat, unfortunately — not that you want water coming into your boat, either. Venice is an excellent place in which to discover the meaning of “time and tide wait for no man.” You can slow an avalanche pretty much as easily as you can slow the tide.
We knew our tidal limit because we had water in the house once before. Yes, that was one memorable moment. On December 1, 2008, we stood there at our doorstep and watched the water slip under our door — and more to the point, under the temporary barrier we had paid 400 euros for. But it wouldn’t have made any difference because only God and, perhaps, the architect has any idea what’s under our dwelling because water began to enter through a fissure in the kitchen wall, and then up from an ungrouted joint between the slabs of stone paving between the bedroom and the hallway. I can tell you that if the tide wants to come up through your floor you better just let it.
By the way, nothing was damaged, and when the tide turned about an hour and a half later, we got out our brooms and just swept it out to sea. Then I had to wash the floor with fresh water, but it needed it anyway. (I waxed it too — I was feeling like celebrating.) Then we put all the stuff that had been thrown onto the bed back under the bed, and life went on. No death, no damage, and as I say, the floor was clean. But you can’t count on high water being so relatively minor every time, and you really don’t want water, salt or otherwise, under your refrigerator and washing machine.
So at 2:00 AM on Christmas Eve (that is, Christmas morning) we got up and began preparing for the onslaught. No wailing, no hysterical vows to the Virgin; we just began to move whatever we could to higher ground (the bathroom) or on the bed. Last year, unbelieving to the last moment, we left everything where it was, which meant that Lino accomplished what ought to be an Olympic sport — the pulling-out-stuff-and-throwing-it-all-on-bed event — in mere seconds.
Then we took out candles and flashlights. I frittered away a little time sweeping and dusting, since I was going to have to do it anyway. We stared out the front door at the water. We listened.
But we were spared. Lino, whose instincts have been honed by an entire lifetime in boats in the lagoon, sensed when the reprieve was arriving — he could tell that the tide had slowed (“gotten tired,” as they put it) at about 3:30. The tide, in fact, did begin to turn then, earlier than predicted, and lower (143 cm) than predicted. The roar of the wind was diminishing. Christmas morning was beginning to look better than we’d supposed.
Turns out that this event was the fourth highest tide since the city began to record them. It also turns out — for real weather geeks — that one reason it occurred was not so much the force of the scirocco but the fact that it was constant for quite a while. In any case, nothing you can do about that; whatever the wind is doing, you just have to go along with it.
But I have to repeat what I always repeat when high tide makes the news: Nobody dies. Nothing gets especially damaged (I put in “especially” so somebody won’t say “Well what about my bookcase?”). The shopowners had to spend the night keeping vigil in their shops, which earned a few lines in the general coverage, but I say: So? We were up too and we don’t have anything we’re planning to sell. Water damage, whether it’s genuine or just labeled as such, is a great way for merchants to get rid of stock that isn’t moving anyway. I did not make that up.
Another point to consider: Whenever the news reports refer to the city being “under water,” or “flooded,” or however they term it, they never say how much of the city, nor do they say to what depth (it isn’t uniform; does one inch count as “flooded”?). Anyway, in the case of an exceptional high water, such as our Christmas Eve marvel, 56 percent of the city has water on the ground. Sound bad? Let’s do this: “44 percent of the city did not have water.” I suddenly feel better. Why don’t the newspapers ever do that? Rhetorical question.
So on to the next tide, I say, and pull out your cameras. But I think somebody should make it illegal to bring your boat into the Piazza San Marco, and doubly illegal to float around so people can snap your picture. The tide comes in, the tide goes out, all it leaves is some muddy slime
and bits of garbage tangled up in clumps of eelgrass and busted bits of reeds floating in from the barene, the marshy wetlands. This has been going on since the ocean was invented. If you really can’t stand it, go live somewhere more tranquil — say, Haiti in hurricane season, or Bangladesh when the typhoons come through. Or even certain parts of Tuscany the past few days, where some rivers have had nervous breakdowns under the unusually torrential rain. It’s just a suggestion.
So I’m going to stick with wishing everyone happy holidays. I’ll be back with more bulletins.
Acqua alta: some snaps
I will eventually be organizing a Gallery page, but meanwhile here are a few additional views of the water-on-the-ground of yesterday. They are not intended to be sensational, but instructive. There is an important difference in the two concepts, especially where issues involving Venice are concerned.
