High tide versus low tide

In Venice, it sometimes happens that due to special weather conditions such as full moon and atmospheric pressure the water level is too high or too low.

High water complicates the life of local people, especially when they walk in the lowest parts of the city where they need to walk on wooden planks and wear rubber boots.

Venetians are aware of those phenomenons and try to adjust their lifestyle as much as they can!

In the last couple of days it has been recorded that the level of the water was 55 cm below the sea level, which is not much as canals are approximately one and a half meter deep. A historical low was registered in 1934, when a tide level of 1, 21 cm below sea level was measured with special tools.

There are no problems with shallow water for public means of transport to circulate in the main canals because they are deeper. The difficulty is above all for ambulances and fire brigade boats that sometimes need to go along narrower and shallower canals.

When it is low tide you can see the bottom of the canals, and you can tell whether they have been recently dredged. The town council follows a program in order to keep up with the cleaning trying to respect schedules. Until more recent times, following old rules, canals were still fenced up for a while in order to be cleaned. As a matter of fact today the less effective way is preferred, that is an excavator that picks up the dirt from the middle of the canal. This procedure is less expensive, but its effect does not last too long.