How a Supermoon helped unblock the Suez Canal

By now, many of us have heard about the Ever Given’s incident, but something that you may have glossed over is the fact that the ship’s new found freedom was aided by a natural cycle caused by the moon.

While initial reports blamed poor weather for the ship becoming stuck, that hasn’t been proven. We do know, however, that efforts to free the ever given were immensely aided by tide cycles.

On Sunday, a Supermoon caused tides to begin rising in the Suez Canal. Overall, tides were expected to rise over a foot and a half higher than normal, allowing for engineers to have the best chance at pulling the ship out from blocking the canal.

In mid-Missouri, we too saw this Supermoon! Also called the Worm Moon, it is a time-old symbol that Springtime is arriving. During this event, a full moon occurs at the same time that Earth is closest to the moon in its orbit. The term, perigee, describes this point.  We typically see two supermoons a year, and this celestial event just happened to benefit the Suez Canal trading route.

We always talk about how the sun impacts our lives, and this was a great real-life example of how the moon can impact daily life as well.