This is why setting borders based on rivers is fundamentally flawed.
This message brought to you by the latitude/longitude gang.
I mean, you say that now, but if someone stood on the other side of the river and shot arrows at you, would you really disagree with them?
Point Roberts has entered the chat
Such a stupid border decision. They should have fixed it in the territory swaps a few years ago.
They should just secede from the union and be a small city state.
Would it benefit anyone? No. Would it be very costly to make the transition and potentially wreak havoc on the community? Absolutely. But would it create a sense of civic pride and feel good for the residents of Point Roberts? Also no.
What territory swaps a few years ago?
It’s also too late now, even if you come to a political agreement you’d have to buy them out, have to hear about unseating American families, and I doubt Canada is willing to do that. What’s the point for that insignificant land?
A while ago (late 90s?) they straightened the border and reevaluated land along the 49th parallel. Some towns switched countries.
Northwest angle
It’s all arbitrary anyway…
Why? Apart from such cases being rare, everyone gets a half island
Because they change and move over time. This river definitely didn’t start out like this and it almost certainly will look very different in just a few years’ time.
Just recently my country exchanged land with a neighbouring country to adjust for the changes of water, each giving and gaining the same amount of land. When water marks the border it’s much easier to know when you’re crossing it.
Edit: looked it up: in march we (Austria) traded 239 m² with Liechtenstein
Good point, that’s a cool solution too!
I know they’re rich, but they’re so small, you should have just let them keep it.
The alternative is pretty fucking stupid too. Imagine losing access to your freshwater because the river shifted across an imaginary line. At least when the border is the river, you always have access to the river.
Sooner or later they’re going to become meander scars or oxbow lakes, when the river reconnects with itself.
Known in Australia as Billabongs
this just shed light on one of my fav song titles by an aussie group, thank you
AC/DC?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvtF2Ie90m0
close enough?
walzing mathilda jumpscare
My first thought when seeing this was future home of an ox bow lake
And not far future! Both bends are within a couple of trees in missing each other.
For those not on the water much, see the beach on the left of the top bow? The opposite side is where the water is deeper and faster. It’ll chew through that bank and meet the other side soon enough.
Holy fuck that oxbow lake schematic on wikipedia looks earily like a vessicle coming of a piece of membrane
The only thing I know about vesicles is that microvesicles are gross… thanks to paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler.
See those “pinch points”? The river will eventually form meander cutoffs, and become a sinuous system rather than a meandering river. This will lead to localized increases in channel slope (due to a reduction in channel length), and therefore increased local velocities, shear stress, and sediment transport.
Rivers are always seeking equilibrium, so the channel will actually start to move (bank erosion / lateral shifting) to reduce that localized slope and bring things back in order.
Rivers are so fucking cool.
As someone who doesn’t know river lingo, can you translate this?
River tangled. River no like tangle. River cut off curvy bits. Connects back to make a less curvy path of least resistance.
curvy bits eventually meet and water go straight, make lakes.
Ah few words better
I don’t know much about rivers but based on the floods we had here in Brazil early this year, I don’t think that house will be there by the end of the century.
Yo but who is living in that little blue house, that must be sick
What little blue house?
The one with the blue little window.
And the blue corvette…
And everything is blue for him…
And himself and everybody around…
Or green* might have had a night filter on my phone when i posted that haha
I’m surprised no one shared that
There was no one by the name Tom Bigbee, it seems.
The name “Tombigbee” comes from Choctaw “itumbi ikbi“, which means “box maker” or “coffin maker”. There are many stories and legends about how this name came to be. One story is the river was named after a box maker who lived on some of the Tombigbee’s headwaters. Another story is based on the need for box making in the area to ship pelts during the French-dominated fur trade in the 1700’s.
Umm… Choctaw
are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Mississippi and Alabama.
Makes sense for it to be a Choctaw name, then. Isn’t the tombigby in, like, Tennessee or something?
I wouldn’t know. My geographical knowledge of North America isn’t good. :) Google maps points to Alabama and Mississippi, when I ask it about the river’s name.
Reminds me of a Wild Thornberrys episode I saw when I was a kid where they fell off a boat and needed to cross a mountain to catch it on the other side.
Is it an oxbow or a puppyhammer?
