One thing that surprised me was how short the list was on the Tidal Bore Wikipedia page [2], and the fact that is it missing an entry for Tidal River at Wilson’s Promontory [3] (where my family often spent the Christmas holidays when I was young).
Some of the tidal bores are described as having a wave as high as two meters, Tidal River is not so impressive, my observation was that during the 80’s it was about 40cm near the mouth of the river. The area near the river mouth had many bends when I last saw it which absorbed some of the energy of the wave (but I expect that the river changes course constantly so it might be straight from time to time).
On one occasion I River Surfed [4] about 500 meters upstream at Tidal River on a surf-mat (an inflatable surf-board).
I have searched for research into this issue, the Tidal Bore Research Society [5] seems to just maintain a list of tidal bores and not do any real research. Pierre Lubin, Stephane Glockner, and Hubert Chanson published a paper titled “Numerical simulation of turbulence generated by a tidal bore” [6]. Hubert Chanson at the University of Queensland has written an interesting paper titled “Physical Modelling of the Flow Field in an Undular Tidal Bore” [7]. Hubert seems to have published more papers related to tidal bores than anyone else (or at least more papers that are publicly accessible).
- [1] http://tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com/141448.html
- [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_bore
- [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_River,_Wilsons_Promontory
- [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_surfing
- [5] http://www.tidalbore.info/
- [6] http://www.trefle.u-bordeaux1.fr/personnel/documents/ti2009_lubin.pdf
- [7] http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view.php?pid=UQ:9448