Then, for three hours as the tide goes out, the water is held back within the breakwater, increasing the difference in water level, until it's several metres higher within the lagoon than in the open sea.
But the threat hasn't gone away for some communities as the high waters continue to flow through river systems and keep certain areas flooded for the time being.
Extreme weather events are threatening other Italian regions from Venice, where the MOSE floodgates have been raised to protect the city from high water to Sicily, where heavy storms down trees and flooded homes.
This cafe opened for the first time since Tuesday's high watermark sent more than a foot of water inside enough to break the dishwasher and the fridge.
It seems inevitable that after a few more cycles of high water and extreme drought, the Spiral Jetty will disappear completely and return to the vast salt bed of the Great Lake, from where it came.
And now we are looking to see whether we can not only stop these processes, but also turn them around in order to get new peat formation at higher water levels.
It was high season, monsoon season, so the river was high, and of course they speak Spanish in South America and I can't speak Spanish and I was traveling alone and I didn't want to travel alone.
Areas like this down here, where you have the Florida Keys, they would basically go completely under water and a lot of areas would also be affected by much, much higher water levels.