“Wind setdown” occurs when strong winds blow over water for an extended period of time, shifting the water body downward.
As noted in a previous column, this shift causes a low-angle tilt, and the upwind shore water level drops.
“As the sun sank over the Nile Delta, a man stood onshore, raising his rod as a howling wind blew from the east. In the morning the sea was gone, blown to the west, permitting people to walk upon dry ground where the day before fish swam and boats sailed.”
The man was not Moses, as described in Exodus 14, but Major General Sir Alexander B. Tulloch, holding a surveyor’s rod, not a staff, in 1882.
On the western end of Lake Erie, numerous wind setdown events have dropped lake levels by two meters.