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Template:Did you know nominations/Van Sickle Island

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bilorv (talk) 14:20, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Van Sickle Island

An aerial view looks south toward a levee breach on Van Sickle Island in early December 1983.
An aerial view looks south toward a levee breach on Van Sickle Island in early December 1983.
  • ... that a syzygy of celestial bodies caused Van Sickle Island (pictured) to flood in 2017? Source: Davis, Aaron (13 January 2017). "Delta islanders repair after floods, look toward next forecast". East Bay Times. Bay Area News Group. Retrieved 23 February 2021.
    • ALT1:... that ...? Source: "You are strongly encouraged to quote the source text supporting each hook" (and [link] the source, or cite it briefly without using citation templates)

5x expanded by JPxG (talk). Self-nominated at 03:20, 26 February 2021 (UTC).

  • New enough and large enough expansion. QPQ present. The sources in the hook fact don't use the word "syzygy", but one mentions this exact event. I'm OK with the image (which is PD) since no alternative is available and the caption does note it is not the 2017 event. No other textual issues I see. Sammi Brie (she/her • tc) 18:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @JPxG and Sammi Brie: came to promote but not confident enough that this is a syzygy without a source that uses the term. Mercury News says Moran explained to visitors that the sun and the moon were both at their closest points to Earth and were also in line. Perhaps it's my astronomical knowledge or reading comprehension, but isn't this just a statement of the Sun and Moon being aligned? From what does it follow that the Earth is also aligned (the "closest points to Earth")? And is this sufficiently trivial an inference to not violate WP:SYNTH? — Bilorv (talk) 03:00, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @Bilorv: It was a spring tide, which is a phenomenon caused by alignment of the sun, earth and moon(referred to as syzygy by a lot of sources); I've added NOAA cites to support that this, as well as there having been a spring tide at the time. jp×g 04:26, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
Bilorv, the sun and the moon are always in line, just like the sun and the earth are; you can always draw a straight line between two points. It's adding the third celestial body (i.e. in this case, earth) that it becomes a syzygy, because there are now three points in a line. And that creates a much higher gravitational pull that either the sun or the moon on its own would. MeegsC (talk) 10:17, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
Very good point, MeegsC, and I appreciate the extra citations JPxG. Happy to promote now. — Bilorv (talk) 14:20, 23 March 2021 (UTC)