Tidal Bore

A tidal bore is when the incoming tide in a tidal river is large enough and fast enough to create one or more waves moving upriver.

I had never heard of a tidal bore until our vacation last year in Nova Scotia. There are not many rivers in the world that experience a tidal bore; there are none in the northeastern United States. On rivers that do have a tidal bore, they occur on the same schedule as the tides, about every 12.5 hours.

Below is a 40-second video of a tidal bore that I took last year in Truro, Nova Scotia, on 5/29/17:

We watched another tidal bore today in Moncton, New Brunswick. Below is a 40-second video that I took this morning:

Note the two blue herons that fly away as the leading wave approaches.

This map shows the two locations, both in rivers that flow into the upper parts of the Bay of Fundy:

Well, the rivers flow into the Bay of Fundy except when the tide makes the water flow the other way!

The tidal bore that we watched today in Moncton was on the Petitcodiac River. I was standing next to the covered pedestrian bridge on the Riverfront Trail that I wrote about in my earlier post titled Bridges.