The Red Sea Was Parted By A Hurricane

The story of Moses is one of the most famous parts of the Old Testament. Over four whole books, we watch Israel’s first prophet grow from an orphaned kid to a crotchety old man stomping around the desert. But it’s in Exodus where the amazing stuff happens—like when God parts the Red Sea to allow the Israelites
to escape Egypt. What’s less well known is that this isn’t the only time such a miracle has occurred.
Seriously: In 1882, the deep waters at Lake Manzala unexpectedly parted, allowing a group of local fishermen to walk across. Rather than the hand of God, this was caused by something known as “wind set-down”—a fancy way of saying the wind blew just fast enough at just the right angle to create a temporary land bridge. When researchers applied this to what we know of the ancient Nile, they discovered that an easterly wind blowing at 101 kilometers per hour (63 mph) for 12 hours would have been enough to create a bridge lasting four whole hours. That’s easily enough time to get a gang of fleeing Israelites across.
But surely Moses crossed the Red Sea and not the Nile? Well, the Hebrew Bible actually specifies that they crossed the “reed sea”—and reeds are something the Nile has plenty of.