It’s hard to conceptualize that number when you’re on the top of the levee: All you see is endless blue. It might as well be a sea.
But what if you could wrap all that water up in a sphere?
How big would that water look then?
Not that big it turns out.It would be a big sphere to be sure – with a diameter of 1.4 miles … and if you could wrap a cloth around it, you’d need 6.3 square miles of it.
Florida’s next biggest lake – Lake George at 460,000 acre feet – would only have a 0.6 mile diameter if similarly spherically wrapped, and require 1.3 square miles of cloth.
Both would be too big an order for the local tailor. (And even if it wasn't, the political controversy over which clothier(s) would get the order would be too difficult to solve!)
That’s why we have hydrologists instead ... and math.
5 comments:
"Both would be too big an order for the local tailor." LOL. That is great. And I'm glad you figured the math out and not me.
Clever graphic Robert. Kind of puts things nicely into perspective.
Thank goodness for graphics..
And I thought I needed a lot of cloth to cover up! My daughter teases me that I'll make the sea level rise if I go swimming in the Gulf. Interesting post and graphic, Mr. S.
Thanks for your comments.
Yes, I'm experimenting with that moving graphic. As with all experiments, the first few are borderline ridiculous, and rudimentary. But they should get better.
The calculation may seem abstract, but it highlights the an enticing concept for water storage in Florida -- containing it off shore in the gulf in as a giant freshwater bubble.
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