{"id":2025,"date":"2013-08-11T06:41:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T13:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/?p=2025"},"modified":"2014-10-12T13:16:17","modified_gmt":"2014-10-12T20:16:17","slug":"venice-in-november-acqua-alta-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/?p=2025","title":{"rendered":"Venice in November – Acqua Alta Risk?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Acqua<\/a><\/p>\n

We are visiting the end of November, which is at the height of the Acqua Alta (or\u00a0high water<\/em>) season. \u00a0A last-minute change in our trip plans this year and work schedule conflicts led to us scheduling our Italy trip later than we’d normally go. \u00a0Despite the weather risk, we are confident we’ll still have a great trip after doing some research. \u00a0Let me explain…<\/p>\n

\"Acqua<\/a><\/p>\n

Graph created using data from City of Venice<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

The graph above is scary for a November Venice visitor. \u00a0Since 1872, one third of all Acqua Alta events (defined as tides 110 cm above sea level, effectively flooding 14% of the city, and most visibly, St. Mark’s Square) have occurred in the month of November. \u00a0Over time, due to subsidence and human modifications to the natural environment, the frequency of events has increased. \u00a0In recent history<\/a> (since 1966), Acqua Alta events occur about 4 times each year. \u00a0What the graph and pictures don’t show you, however, is that Acqua Alta events are actually fairly short in duration. \u00a0A similar graph<\/a> to the one above on the City of Venice website shows that Acqua Alta events occur predominately in the morning, between 8am and noon. \u00a0The actual time where flooding occurs is driven by the tide cycles. \u00a0As seen in the graph below, showing the tide cycles over 3 days, the peaks span at most 4 hours. \u00a0So, at worst, an aqua alta event will impact a morning. \u00a0It’s also important to remember that the Acqua Alta events are driven by astronomical reasons, not meteorological. \u00a0Just because the water is high, doesn’t mean it’s raining.<\/p>\n

\"Venice<\/a>The final thing we uncovered in our research that made us comfortable visiting Venice in November is the amount of resources the city invests in preparing for Acqua Alta. \u00a0In addition to a dedicated monitoring and warning department<\/a>, the city also erects elevated platforms along main streets to allow people to walk above the water. \u00a0The vaporetto water buses continue to operate and many hotels we looked at provide water boots for guests.<\/p>\n

In addition to reading about Acqua Alta, we also took a look at the historic weather trends for late November. \u00a0Weatherbase.com<\/a> is a great resource for pulling weather statistics by date. \u00a0For this trip, I built a quick Excel spreadsheet<\/a> to summarize the temperature trends, chance of precipitation, and chance of “heavy rain”. \u00a0For our time period of interest, I obtained the following results:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n
Avg. Low<\/td>\nAvg. High<\/td>\nAny Precipitation<\/td>\n“Rain”\/”Heavy Rain”<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
40<\/td>\n51<\/td>\n17%<\/td>\n2%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We felt very comfortable with the results. \u00a0We can mitigate cold temperatures with warmer clothing, and a 2% chance of heavy precipitation doesn’t seem unreasonable compared to what we’d expect at any place anytime of the year.<\/p>\n

After addressing the weather risk, we became extremely excited to visit in the off-season. \u00a0Visitors are often turned-off by the extreme crowds in Venice. \u00a0We last visited in early September, and although very crowded, we still enjoyed ourselves and found seclusion in the city late at night. \u00a0However, in late November, we are expecting solitude even in the daylight hours. \u00a0According to statistics from the Veneto Region government<\/a>\u00a0used to construct the graph below, November is nearly tied with December and January for the lowest nights spent by tourists in Venice per month. \u00a0Relative to when we last visited September, there will be almost as little as a third of the people visiting Venice. \u00a0Meanwhile, unlike more rural destinations or seasonal destinations, Venice will be completely open for business in November. \u00a0All of the hotel and restaurant options we’ve looked at are open.<\/p>\n

\"Nights<\/a><\/p>\n

We were able to use online resources to effectively address our concerns about weather in Venice in November. \u00a0We are looking forward to a very romantic visit and an opportunity to see one of our favorite cities with far fewer crowds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are visiting the end of November, which is at the height of the Acqua Alta (or\u00a0high water) season. \u00a0A last-minute change in our trip plans this year and work schedule conflicts led to us scheduling our Italy trip later … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13,83,30,5,34,136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suitcasejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}