Harbour and River Bars
A harbour or river bar is a sedimentary deposit formed at a harbour entrance or river mouth by the deposition of sediment or the action of waves on the sea floor or adjacent beaches. A bar can form a dangerous obstacle to shipping, preventing access to the river or harbour in unfavourable weather conditions or at some states of the tide. Where beaches are suitably mobile, or the river’s suspended and/or bed loads are large enough, wave action can build up a bar to completely block a river mouth, damming the river, preventing access for boats or shipping, and causing flooding in the lower reaches of the river. This situation will persist until the bar is eroded by the sea, or the dammed river develops sufficient head to break through the bar.
Read more about this topic: Shoal
Famous quotes containing the words harbour, river and/or bars:
“Patience, the beggar’s virtue, Shall find no harbour here.”
—Philip Massinger (1583–1640)
“You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,
Through funeral parlors and honky-tonks.
From river to river you comb the town
For a place to lay your family down.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“Not to find one’s way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance—nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city—as one loses oneself in a forest—that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)