Dear Otus,
Our crazy neighbor here on the lake has put a wall of sandbags around his house. He says it’s because of the coming supermoon. I thought that was just sort of like a blue moon. Should I be worried?
- Larry Talbot, Lake Hamilton Dear Larry,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, but let’s hold off passing judgment on the sanity of your neighbor until after this weekend is over.
The supermoon will be at its peak at precisely 5:32 a.m. this morning, with tides and other bodies of water adversely affected for 24 hours. That includes Lake Hamilton, as well as all lakes in the state.
Crazy? Don’t forget, Noah’s neighbors, Yutzi and Shmendrik, also called him nuts for using gopher wood for the ark and accused him of early onset dementia (if being 600 years old can be called “early” in a man who lived to be 950).
Whether it was prudent to go to the trouble and expense to sandbag his home depends on how close your neighbor is to the water. According to Entergy Arkansas reports, only Lake Hamilton south shore homes east of CentralAvenue and north of Arkansas 290 are in danger from the rising water.
And that’s only because Lake Hamilton is already full due to the heavy rains this spring. Entergy is holding off releasing water from Carpenter Dam until the full effect of the supermoon is known. With the pool level already near the 403-foot 100-year flood level on area hydrographs, homes within 30 feet of the lake are threatened.
The supermoon’s gravitational pull is expected to temporarily raise water levels six to eight feet today. And that’s not taking into account any last-minute perturbations.
The last time this happened was the supermoon of1982 and the next won’t occur until 2043.
What, exactly, is a supermoon? Let’s just call it a “close encounter” of lunacy.
As we learned in our fifthgrade astronomy and apsis classes, the moon is on an elliptical orbit around the Earth during the 27.5-day sidereal month and varies from an apogee of 252,581 miles to a perigee of slightly more than 200,000 miles.
That may not seem like much difference, but it’s a delicate balance, and on the rare occasions when a full moon coincides with an early summer perigee, the effect can be dramatic - a supermoon.
To exacerbate the problem, summer officially arrived at 12:04 a.m. Friday. Sunrise today in Little Rock will be at 5:57 a.m. and sunset is 8:26 p.m. There will be 14 hours and 29 minutes of daylight each day through the 26th.
Summer solstice, a full moon - it’s the perfect storm of celestial events.
The full moon today and Sunday will be one for the record books. The apparent size of the supermoon lunar disk will be 28.2 percent larger than normal, and for the next 24 hours, the moon willbe 33.8 percent brighter.
A “blue moon,” on the other hand, is simply the occasional second full moon in a calendar month. The last one was in 2012 and next one will be on July 31, 2015.
Unlike a supermoon, a blue moon carries with it no tidal, aquatic or, most ominously, lycanthropic anomalies.
Those who take baths, for example, are urged to only fill their tubs three-quarters full today or risk having to mop up a bathroom full of spillage.
And I’m not one to sign on to therianthropy, but the effect of a normal full moon on the canine species is well-recorded. Arkansas leads the nation with 47.9 percent of households owning a dog. Owners are urged to keep a close eye on their pets today in the event that the supermoon causes hyper adverse reactions, especially among smaller breeds that can suddenly exhibit mesomorphic behavioral abnormalities.
There’s nothing morefrightening than a Shih Tzu that suddenly believes it’s a Boerboel.
The so-called “lunar effect” might also manifest itself today in increased crime levels, as it did in 1982.
The human body is, after all, composed of 57 percent water, with 70 percent of that being intracellular. A supermoon’s effect on the bio-electrical impedance analysis can scramble the body’s electrolytes and cause irrational behavior.
However, one of the benefits of a supermoon will be the ability to actually see, with the aid of a small telescope, the lunar rover and module left behind by Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Look for the doughnuts Schmitt and the rover cut in the dust in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley located at 20.0 degrees N, 31.0 degrees E.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that it’s probably too late for sandbags.
Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail:
HomeStyle, Pages 34 on 06/22/2013