The full moon, the Bay Scallop Moon, is being heralded as the closest full moon we’ve seen since 1948. The moon will be 221,524 miles away, a couple thousand miles closer than usual. Don’t expect to see anything visually different about this “big” moon, unless you’ve got special visual calipers attached to your telescope.

The biggest noticeable impact on our lives will be our tide. Tides will be extreme, higher than normal and lower than normal. The impact will be this weekend and well into next week. The greatest tide will be on Monday, when the tide will be highest near noon and midnight and lowest at dawn and dusk. You’ll notice it. The wrack line along the beaches will be higher. Some sandbars you haven’t seen before may appear too.

We get close moons all the time, but this is the closest full moon. The moon is in perigee every 28 days. But what is unusual is that this time, perigee coincides with our full moon.

Since our tides are created by the presence of the sun and the moon, our tides vary from day to day. At times their gravitational pull coincides as it does in the coming week. Extreme tides also takes place when the moon is in the New Moon phase and in perigee.

These kind of tides happen three or more times a year, so enjoy. For those hunting bay scallops and quahaugs, early morning and late afternoon will be an ideal time.