High Tide on 22 Feb Led to Floods at East Coast Park for At Least 2 Hours

While most of us living in Singapore be lucky enough not to experience (or even witness) any natural disasters in Singapore, that might not have been the case yesterday (22 February) when flooding happened in the afternoon.

And no, I’m not talking about the flooding in your bathroom.

In fact, a tide of 3.4m was recorded at East Coast Park yesterday (22 February), which probably seems like a record-high tide (pun intended) for most of us.

But don’t worry, because there’s an actual reason behind the high tide. (Surprise, it’s not because a sea monster has appeared in East Coast Park).

And here’s the reason why.

Spring Tides: What Are They

Right before the high tide started, the Public Utilities Board (PUB) uploaded a post regarding high tides and spring tides on its Facebook page.

“During high tide periods, water level can get quite high and seawater can overflow to the surrounding areas[,] especially when combined with heavy rainfall,” PUB explained in the post.

“Spring tides are a natural phenomenon that happens when the Sun, Moon and Earth are aligned, resulting in the gravitational pull of the Sun to be added to that of the Moon’s,” PUB added.

So yup, in addition to blaming the moon for being incompatible with your crush’s zodiac, you can also blame the moon for the flooding in Singapore.

The post was uploaded at 12.07 pm on Wednesday (22 February), which happened to be right before the spring tide occurred.

According to the National Environmental Agency (NEA) website, a tide of 3.4m was recorded at 12.24 pm that day, shortly after PUB’s announcement.

When reporters from Lianhe Zaobao visited East Coast Park at around 3 pm that day, some grass patches and walkways near the coast were flooded.

Workers were also seen using pipes to try and drain the water out of the area.

Previous Cases of High Tide in Singapore

And this isn’t the first time that Singapore has seen high tide and flooding.

Earlier this year, on 25 January, a tide level of 3.4m was also recorded.

East Coast Park experienced flooding as well, but the tide subsided after two hours.

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“Based on historical tide data over the last ten years, a 3.4m tide level at Singapore’s southern coast was observed during the January and February period in 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2019,” PUB added in their Facebook post.

A tide of 3.3m was also recorded today (23 February) at 1.11 pm.

The record-high tide (again, pun intended) in Singapore is 3.9m, which was recorded back in 1974.